Pulwama: After witnessing a disturbing trend among the students of south Kashmir who found it difficult to prepare for competitive exams owing to their reluctance to visit Srinagar or even poor financial background, a few energetic young teachers in Pulwama took it upon themselves as a challenge to tackle.
Initially, their initiative was to help aspirants by offering them free mentorship by some young qualifiers. Soon afterwards, the volunteer teachers realized the mentorship was not enough. The reputed teachers started a novel coaching institute, Reading Room Classes (RRC), with the aim to help those aspirants who lack guidance, money and motivation.
Through RCC, they provide quality coaching to students at an affordable monthly fee to make it accessible to all those who dreamt of qualifying exams like IAS, KAS and other reputed national and state-level competitive exams but were held back owing to various problems like reluctance to visit Srinagar or even poverty.
Just a week ago, a fresh new batch has enrolled in Reading Room Classes, which is located in Dalipora area of main town Pulwama. However, it has already been making waves with the kind of successful careers the students from its previous batches excelled to achieve.
Dr Zahoor, who teaches Geography at the institute, says that the institute is a first-of-its-kind coaching institute providing quality coaching and mentoring for competitive exams in Pulwama district. “We are really happy to see young students thronging the institute. Their enthusiasm for appearing in competitive exams is a satisfying new trend,” the teacher says.
The institute is not frequented by students from Pulwama only, but the quality teaching and student-centric coaching courses appeal to students from other districts as well. “Students from Pampore, Awantipora, Pakherpora, Chadoora, Keller and even Sangerwani have enrolled themselves at the institute. We are elated to see that the students are now finally realizing the difference and responding to our endeavour,” Mr Sajad, another teacher, says with a visible smile on his face.
He further adds, “We take care of the timing in such a way so that students from other districts like Shopian and Budgam don’t get late to their homes. This is why more and more students from other districts are now opting to enrol here rather than visiting Srinagar.”
Interestingly, many of the candidates, who had joined Reading Room Classes for preparing themselves for JKSSB exams, have already been employed in various government departments like J&K Department of Rural Development & Panchayati Raj, J&K School Education Department, J&K General Administration Department, J&K Police Department and many other government departments.
Run by experienced teachers and tutors, Reading Room Classes offers unique and specialized coaching for students appearing for the Kashmir Administrative Services (KAS) and the Jammu and Kashmir Services Selection Board (JKSSB) exams.
Besides, the institute also offers some crisp coaching courses for exams like IAS, NEET, JEE. Also, the institute prepares young minds with Foundation Courses for classes 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th in all streams.
When asked how can interested students get in touch with the institute if they have any queries or doubts, the convener of the institute said they have a dedicated phone number 6006600148, which is accessible from 8 AM to 10 PM daily.
It is pertinent to mention here that the institute has managed to garner a lot of attention from the student community as it offers the coaching at a minimal monthly fee (not lumpsum amount), one-to-one interaction with the teachers, up-to-date and tailor-made study material for various courses, fortnightly exams for revision and progress report, easy access to online teaching mode and free coaching for orphans and specially-abled students.
