'Private coaching system turning counter-productive'

Private coaching - a parallel system of education - appears to have engulfed the academic system. Even our policy-makers, examining bodies and academicians are working to preserve the sanctity of this parallel system. What was once not held in high regard has now become an unavoidable trend. Is there a way out for the student-parent community?
Managers of schools claim that private coaching save students' time and energy, usually spent running between junior college/school and coaching classes.
As an academician, I see these alternative institutions as the reason students don't pay attention in class. Since the course is the same, they neither respect teachers at school nor do they value what is taught at school.
These institutions also charge hefty sums and pay teachers bigger salaries for working fewer hours. In this race, schools lose out on good teachers.
As education turns into a market, the yardstick of a good school is now the number of students who qualify in competitive exams and the scores in board exams. While focus on these factors do ease the way ahead for students, it is often forgotten that success has different meaning for different people at different times.
By quantifying the quality of education, we are misleading the youth. We are taking away from the essence of education and producing a heartless and mechanical society. In the long run, it can only paralyse our thinking. Instead, it is teaching skills of life-long learning that is the need of the hour.
(The author is the principal of DPS, Guwahati.)