Student suicides: Kota district administration issues SOP to implement guidelines

Nine months after the Rajasthan government notified regulatory guidelines for coaching centres, hostels, and paying guest accommodations to prevent student suicides, the district administration of Kota on Friday issued a standard operating procedure (SOP) to ensure proper execution of the norms.

The guidelines issued on September 28 by the State Higher Education Department had directed that “all the district administration will immediately prepare an SOP for the coaching institutes and the hostel authorities at their own level for the effective and time-bound implementation of the guidelines. “The district administration will also take necessary action against the coaching or hostel authorities in case of any violation of the guidelines,” it had said

At least 13 students preparing for the National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) or Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) in Kota have died by suicide so far this year. The corresponding figure was 27 last year, the highest since 2015, said officials.

Kota district collector Ravindra Goswami on Saturday said, “An order to follow the guidelines was already issued to the coaching centres and the hostels, for which the district administration had also formed a slew of panels in the last few months to monitor them. We have also conducted many surveys to oversee and maintain a record on how the stakeholders are following the norms. Necessary actions were also taken against the ones who violated it. However, the new SOP will now regularise and smoothen the monitoring process and will also ensure the stakeholders follow the norms more appropriately in a particular time frame.”

Following the guideline, the SOP has directed the coaching centres to provide every student with an alpha-numeric unique ID by July 15 to maintain a digital record of their attendance.

“The Kota district administration is working on a digital portal which is likely to be launched next week through which all the coaching centres and hostels will have to register themselves and also each of their students with the local administration every time they first arrive in Kota. The portal will then automatically generate a unique ID for every student which will keep track of them during the entire period they study in Kota,” the collector said.

According to the officials, the ID will be operated through the data daily put by the coaching centers and hostels. “We will not track the students’ movements through GPS tracking, but the information daily uploaded by both the coaching center and hostel/PG of every student. Hence, this portal will help us build a database on the number of students annually arriving in Kota, their backgrounds, and also their attendance in the coaching centres and hostels. The ID will build a centralised system that will continue the tracking even if a student switches to a different coaching center or hostel and leaves the city in the middle of the course,” Goswami added.

In the SOP, the coaching directors were also instructed to report to the Kota Students’ Cell or the District Monitoring Cell within 3 days if a student continues to skip the class. They were also directed to form a dedicated team comprising faculty and other staff who will visit their students at the hostel or PG to note their problems in getting accustomed to a new city and a new study environment.

“Most of the students in Kota hail from outside Rajasthan. They need people to discuss their problems. The job of this dedicated team will be to interact with the students with a personal and homely touch so that they can open up about their problems,” the Kota administration said in a statement on Friday.

It also said that a mandatory psychological counseling session will also be provided to the guardians on behalf of the government once their children arrive in Kota. “A career counseling session will also compulsorily be given to every student and guardian so that they don’t get into depression if they fail to crack JEE or NEET,” the statement said.

The SOP also directed all the coaching centers to frame a policy at their own level by next week to provide the student with free refund and easy exit also in case of mandatory deportation. “All the coaching centres, hostels, and the PGs will have to keep a Dropbox for the students’ complaints. All of them are also required to display the helpline number and the control room number of the students’ cell run by the Kota police,” it said.

The administration also emphasised on the installation of the anti-hanging device in the fans of the hostels and PGs as per the guidelines. Amid a surge in suicides among students last year, the district administration ordered all hostels and PG accommodations on August 18 to install spring-loaded fans in rooms “to provide students mental support and security”.

“All the coaching centres, hostels, and the PGs will be mandated to update the district administration regarding the steps they have taken as per the new SOP by Monday,” the SOP said.

Kota is the centre of India’s test-prep business, estimated to be worth ₹10,000 crore annually, according to officials in the district administration. Students from around the country arrive here in huge numbers after completing Class X and register in residential test-prep institutes. They also enrol in schools, most of which are largely for purposes of certification.

Students attend classes only in the test-prep institutes, which prepare them for their Class XII examination, but more importantly, entrance examinations such as NEET and Joint Entrance Examination (JEE). Some students find the grind stressful, especially because they are away from their families.

According to police data, 15 students died by suicide in Kota in 2022, 18 in 2019, 20 in 2018, seven in 2017, 17 in 2016, and 18 in 2015. No suicides were reported in 2020 and 2021 as coaching institutes were shut or ran in online mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

On September 28, the Rajasthan government announced a series of measures to prevent suicides among students, such as a mandatory screening test, the alphabetical sorting of students into sections instead of a ranking-based one, and the admission of students who are in Class IX or higher.

The guidelines also recommended mandatory training for teachers, institute managers, other staff, and the wardens of the hostels and paying guest accommodations to enable them to assess behavioural changes of students and take further preventive measures.

On January 16, the Union education minister also released specific instructions for functioning of coaching centres and restricted enrollment above the age of 16. It warned of a penalty of ₹1,00,000 for institutes in case of any violation of the terms and conditions.

“The Rajasthan government’s guidelines have covered majority of the norms from the Union ministry’s guidelines. However, the penalty norms of the ministry’s guidelines are under the overview of the judiciary at this moment and therefore the SOP could not add it. We will update it once the judgement comes,” said collector Goswami.