A deluge of coaching institutes, engrossed in cooking up dirty tricks to earn quick bucks, have cropped up across the country. The jaw-dropping amount of money that they extract by fooling students into believing their ridiculously ambitious claims is tough to decipher, even for the entrepreneurial minds.
Paying them back in the same coin, this Mumbai girl, Abhivyakti Verma, a class 12 student in 2013, got the Oxford Tutors academy in Mumbai to pay Rs, 3.64 lakh for failing to provide promised services.
The Consumer court, on Thursday, slapped a fine of Rs 3.64 lakh on Oxford Tutors academy in Andheri for failing to provide promised services to Abhivyakti Verma, a class 12 student in 2013, said a report inmid-day.
Abhivyakti had enrolled for Mathematics and Chemistry in Oxford academy, who provide private coaching to students.
The centre, that claims to have an experienced faculty, failed to provide a Chemistry teacher to the class 12 student for a month. Plus, the teacher who taught her Mathematics was from a Hindi medium and couldn’t converse in English.
On persistent request from the student’s mother, Neena, who is an advocate, the academy sent a teacher who taught Std VIII in the ICSE board.
Neena, worried that her daughter would not be able to score good, approached the tutors seeking someone who could really help out her daughter.
Apparently, the IIT student the academy sent this time to help Abhivyakti with Chemistry also failed to deliver the need of the hour. As a result, the girl who had scored a 83% in her SSC boards, scored under 60% in HSC exams.
Abhivyakti told mid-day that the Chemistry teacher was slow in covering the portions that resulted in her poor performance in exam:
The Chemistry teacher was slow in covering portions, especially in the first six months. I was weak in Chemistry, and that it is why I had enrolled for coaching. I didn’t know what was happening. I was tense about everything. There was a time when I slipped into depression. It was my father who helped me with Chemistry. Also, the centre replaced the tutor at the last minute. The centre is responsible for my low score.
Neena told mid-day that the tutoring centre went back even on its basic promises:
“The teachers were incapable of teaching and because of having different tutors who had their own methods of teaching, my daughter was thoroughly confused and wasn’t prepared for the exams.”
In 2015, Neena filed a case against the Oxford Tutors Academy and represented herself in court.
The consumer forum has directed the coaching centre to refund the fee amounting to Rs 54,000 and pay upto Rs 3 lakh for failing to provide necessary services. The coaching center has also been asked to pay Rs 10,000 towards court expenses.
(Feature Image Source: PTI)