Academics & Tuitions

Son's cricket friends all joined a foundation batch. What is the week like?

bronze_sparrow_5807

Our boy is in Class 8, 13 years old, state board, English medium. Over the Dasara break most of the boys he plays cricket with signed up for an IIT foundation batch at a centre near us. Classes three evenings a week and a test every Sunday, from what I've been told. He hasn't asked to join. When I ask him, he says 'maybe' and 'everyone is going'. His school marks are fine, maths is his stronger subject, and he has shown no particular interest in engineering yet. The brochure is very polished. What I'd find useful from parents whose children are in one of these at 13 or 14 is the ordinary week. How late does it run, what happens to school homework on class days, and did the Sunday tests stay useful after the first couple of months? I'm trying to work out whether we'd be joining for him or for the group.

6 comments

  • mint_notebook_7286

    My elder one started foundation in Class 7, so this is his second year. The ordinary week: three evenings from 5.30 to 8, home by 8.30, dinner, then school homework till 10 on a bad day. The Sunday test was useful for maybe two months. After that it became the part of the week he dreaded most. This year we dropped the Sunday tests and kept the classes. Mixed feelings overall, but he does enjoy the maths :)

  • lemon_tiffin_7349

    Mine is only 8, so the coaching itself is outside my experience. We did go through a small version of this with an abacus class when all her friends joined, and we signed her up mostly so she wouldn't be left out. She lasted four months. What does he say when the friends are taken out of the question? If the group dropped out tomorrow, would he still want to go?

  • dusk_balcony_1641

    We're IB so there's no board exam pushing this yet, but my son's tuition friends are all in some foundation class or other and he came home asking about it in the summer. What helped was letting him sit in on one trial session. Two hours later he'd decided his friends were more fun outside class than inside it. Might be different for your boy, but a trial costs very little.

    • bronze_sparrow_5807

      We tried this. The centre agreed to one trial class and he went this morning. His summary: the maths was a chapter ahead of school and not hard, the physics teacher was good, and he sat beside his friends but they weren't allowed to talk. He hasn't asked to go back. I'm not treating that as a final answer, but it was a better conversation than the ones we'd been having.

  • moss_paper_9136

    Something the brochure didn't mention for us: school and tuition each assume their work comes first, and a foundation class would be a third set of adults with the same assumption. My elder son is 12 and has regular tuition for two subjects. In exam weeks we already have the tutor setting a test on the same day as school. I'd ask how the centre handles school exam weeks before anything else.

    • cedar_hammock_3410

      Do any of these centres actually pause around school exams, or do they all keep their own test calendar?

    • linen_notebook_4905

      the one near us keeps its own. my elder one's friends had a 'grand test' there in the same week as their school half-yearlies last year. guess which one the centre thought was more important

  • ivory_piano_2227

    Our son is 11 and the same conversation has started in his class this year, earlier than I expected. We've decided to wait until at least Class 8 and look again then. Part of it is distance. The centres people recommend from LB Nagar are a 30-minute drive each way at that hour, and three evenings a week of that seemed a lot to give up for something he isn't asking for.

  • lilac_camera_2365

    My son did two years of entrance coaching about fifteen years ago, when it was less organised than it is now. What I remember is that the coaching mattered less than whether the friends he made there were serious. At 13, I would pay more attention to how your son feels about the group than to the syllabus. That can cut both ways, of course. It may be the reason to join, or the reason not to.

    • sage_fern_563

      Groups change every year though. My son's cricket gang split three ways after Class 6, different sections, different tuitions. Thoda wait karke dekho, by next year it may not even be the same group.

Add a comment

Share what happened for you. Plain text; be kind and specific.

Keep going

Keep reading

More from the parents who were here.