Well, do not be! A recent survey report shows that Indian families spend close to Rs 25,000 crore on private tuitions alone, and this does not include amounts spent on test preparation and other forms of off-campus learning.

The striking proliferation of private tuitions, even among the pre-primary kids, highlight an important fact. That parents are not satisfied with the quality of the school education system in the country. There could be multiple reasons. For example, once a child leaves the classroom, she/he no longer has access to the in-class learning material – be it a teacher’s notes on the whiteboard, a YouTube video that may have been played, etc.

It is a well-established fact that all students do not learn at the same pace, and that many students need self-paced learning or additional lessons to catch up, which is why most of the parents turn to private tuitions.

Parents are willing to spend as much as necessary on private tuitions but grudge when it comes to increases in school fees. Their belief is that private tuitions are able to address the reinforcement of concepts better than the schools can. While tutors fill in the learning gaps left by the schools, this practice is a drain on parental resources.

The term “Learning Management System” (LMS) quite frequently makes an appearance in education-related articles. An LMS is a software solution that helps bring structure and continuity to learning through curated lesson plans, live lessons, assignment of additional learning resources, testing and certification, detailed analytics on learner progress and outcome, and more. LMS are typically used by educational institutions – schools, colleges, universities, coaching classes, skill trainers – and companies to deliver online learning courses and other training programs.

An LMS does not replace teachers and trainers, but instead empowers teachers and trainers enhance their teaching methodologies and keep parents aware of their ward’s performance. In fact, almost all educational institutions have been able to ensure continuity in learning during the Covid-enforced lockdowns by deploying LMS’ and other online learning tools.

In and Outside Classroom Learning
An LMS is a solution that enables learning beyond the traditional classroom. The student can access study material and additional learning material after classroom hours for self-paced studying at home. This creates a blended learning approach of instructor-led learning in the classroom and self-paced online learning outside the classroom.

Personalised Learning
One reason why parent turn to private tutors is because of personal attention. An LMS can also be used to personalise the learning experience for its learners. This is done by capturing the learning progress of each learner, gauging his/her comprehension from homework submissions, assessments and using analytics and dashboards to come up with personalised learning paths for corrective action as required.

Doubt Clearing
An online learning platform has discussion forums that can be utilised by students for doubt clarification by writing to the teacher. Communication can be one-to-one or one-to-all so that all students that may be part of a batch can benefit from doubts being raised by peers.

Mastery of Concepts
A proven way to ensure that students have mastered concepts is by repeatedly taking tests. Online platforms come with auto-correct facilities, which ensure that, in addition to taking practice quizzes and exams over-and-over again, in many cases results are instantaneous so that a student can learn from her/his mistakes.

Flipping the Classroom
Traditional learning was where new concepts were taught for the first time in classroom. This method has its disadvantages as many students may not grasp these new concepts the first time around. By making available learning material online and getting students to read the same can come prepared to class has two benefits: 1) that the student has some level of understanding of what is going to taught, and 2) that the instructor or teacher can spend more time reinforcing concepts where there is doubt rather than spending all his/her time on delivering the lesson.