Dummy School Vs Regular School Vs Integrated School - Which One to Choose?

Despite hundreds of career options, medicine continues to be the most coveted career option in front of students and parents. This is evident from more than 25L students who appear in entrance exams every year. 

For more than two decades, we, at Disha Publication have been producing exhaustive study material for competitive exams like NEET that are essential to help students lead their medical aspirations. However, in such a cutthroat competition where every single mark counts, sometimes coaching becomes a necessary aspect to stay consistent in your preparation journey amidst all the academic pressure.

Moreover students find it difficult to decide when and why to join or how to strike the right balance between school and coaching that extremely affects their preparation even if they study from the best material. Hence, it's one of the biggest challenges in front of students and parents, that we chose to discuss today through this article.

Introduction

Students need clarification on how they should plan their competitive exam preparation in Class XI/XII, whether they should join a Dummy school, Regular School, or Integrated School.

Regular coaching has challenges in terms of the following:

• Time is wasted on various activities in school. By the time the students come back from school, they are drained.
• Coaching and school may be teaching different chapters. (tests at an additional time)
• Schools are very fussy with attendance, especially in class 12.
• Schools don't encourage coaching because they want students to get good scores on boards, whereas coaching is not for Boards.
• Often, teacher quality could be better, leading to a waste of time.
• Dummy Schools are schools which have tie-ups with coaching institutes. You do not worry about attendance and don't go to the schools, and the entire focus is on JEE/NEET preparation which is handled by coaching. It means you'll attend school just for tests and exams and can save that time for entrance exam preparation.
• Integrated Schools: Schools where JEE/NEET coaching is provided along with school education. Some schools have tied up with coaching institutes where science and maths classes are taken by coaching teachers, whereas in some cases, the coaching classes are provided by the school only. Most of the residential schools offer Integrated programmes. The quality of teachers in integrated schools has always been a concern, so this model has yet to be successful. 

Pros and Cons of Dummy School

Pros: 

• You focus only on subjects related to competitive exams, so you have more time for learning and practice.
• There is no compulsion to attend, so you only go to school only when it is required.
• Teaching is integrated, so there are no clashes between school and coaching
• Focus is not divided- no tension of school exams, practicals and other activities

You don't have to waste time studying one thing twice in both school and coaching. 

Cons:

• Since the students have a lot of time, they get distracted. Once I was in Kota and wanted to access a cybercafé, and all seats were full. The owner told me many students play video games for 5-6 hours daily. Social media, mobile devices and internet access have become a big challenge today.
• You may get into the wrong company.
• No focus on basic concepts and NCERT books.
• No focus on Board exams. Marks in class XII are considered at many places throughout your career.
• Also, the monotonicity of sitting at home and doing only studies kills your interest in studying. You must remember those summer vacations when we are bored of having fun the whole day round, so if we can get bored while playing, how can one expect that in this long run of 2 years, only studies will not get monotonous?

Pros and Cons of Regular School

Pros:

• It helps in building basic concepts.
• Focus on holistic personality. Apart from knowledge, you require skills. Despite what your coaching class instructor tells you, there is more to being educated than knowing the sciences. A sizable populace at IITs suffers because they don't have basic writing, coding or communication skills. This will always give you an edge and can only be achieved (correctly) in school. Personality development cannot take place when you are alone at your home. Attending dummy schools gives you some hours, but in the long haul, you lose value, not as an aspirant but as a member of society.
• No matter how shitty the education system of schools is, they are an essential part of your life. I am not telling you to abandon your JEE preparation and focus on schools entirely, but this is your time to enjoy school life and blend into its environment. 
• I have great memories associated with my school and some amazing friends from my school days. The school also forced me to perform well in the 12th boards by putting so much pressure, which helped me in my competitive exam preparation.

Cons:

• Time is wasted on many activities which are not essential and that you may not like.
• Not synchronized (chapter flow and tests and other things).
• Attendance
• Too much pressure to maintain a balance between school and coaching.
• Teacher quality

What should be your preferred approach?

• Regular school + coaching is the best
• Focus maximum on JEE/NEET preparation while in class XI. 
• Take selective offs while in class XII.
• Class X11 also helps in JEE/NEET preparation
• Form a group of like-minded students in the schools and use it as an opportunity
• Select coaching which is close to your house
• Prefer weekend batches
• To summarize, rather than ignoring the school focus should be on Time management./ Energy Management.

For JEE, 1 to 2 years of preparation is more than enough! Any extra time spent on it will be more saturation and nothing else. When you look back on these 4 to 5 years from now, you will feel so proud of yourself, and if you can hustle these two years, you can do anything in life. 

School + coaching could be a better combination. Sometimes you will feel frustrated and out of energy and motivation, but you must believe in yourself and your work.

Lastly, the decision is individual, and you must take the decision which suits you best, keeping the above points in mind.

This article is written by Avinash Agarwal, the Director of DISHA Publication. As a seasoned Study Skill Coach, he has written various books on improving Student life and simplifying exam preparation, such as Stop Being a Maggu!, Toppers' Study Hacks, The Secret Code of UPSC Toppers, and Bhagavad Gita - The Story Way.