Training programme for rural students to prepare for JEE

Updated on: Friday, November 23, 2012

IIT-Hyderabad is on a charity mission. In the last two months, the premier technical institute has gone on a community-service spree around its vicinity with the students teaching schoolchildren and prepping them up for IIT-Joint Entrance Examination.

While most private schools in Hyderabad conduct specialized IIT coaching from class VI, few government schools are oriented enough to teach children on the national-level competitive exam. Interestingly, IIT-H's local mission began at a time when requests for reservation of seats for local students are flooding the state government offices.

According to the student coordinator of the charity mission, three schools in the vicinity, Zilla Parishad High School-ODF, Indrasaran and Cheriyal have been taken up on a trial basis for coaching. The institute is planning to extend its services to other schools in the area. This month, a total of 500 students from about seven schools in the neighbourhood had visited IIT for a coaching class meant to orient them towards higher studies in technological institutes. "We provide coaching to students on every Saturday. It's our contribution to local people for hosting IIT-H," said Aradhya Biswas, an IIT student and coordinator of the National Service Scheme.

The NSS wing of the institute runs most of the social service programmes in the state. While a total of 30 students of IIT-H are involved in the coaching exercise, institute head says apart from cloth donation, running workshops in neighbourhood colleges, several social service initiatives are being taken up by the students.

According to the students it was only recently that they collected clothes for distribution to slum-dwellers in Hyderabad. "The institute collected over 2,000 clothes for distribution at a slum pocket in Borabanda. The students were overtly excited about the charity drive, and hence we from the administration extended support to them," said Anirban Roy, assistant professor at IIT-Hyderabad.

IIT-H's social commitment started recently with student groups on campus set up various social service clubs. In future, they plan to extend their services, including teaching traffic rules to children from rural areas. "We are looking at the initiatives as part of a larger rural outreach programme. Since the institute is located in Medak, there are several villages in the surrounding areas and we expect the programmes to get good appreciation," said Biswas.

Training programme for rural students to prepare for JEE

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