The ₹54,000 crore "Dummy School" education mafia

The ₹54,000 crore "Dummy School" education mafia.

You send your child to school to learn.

But the biggest coaching giants in India have convinced parents to pay schools to let their kids stay home.

Welcome to the dark economics of the Dummy School concept.

The Indian coaching industry is an absolute behemoth.

Estimates suggest the market is valued at over ₹54,000 crore.

Giants like Allen Career Institute alone report annual revenues crossing ₹3,200 crore.

But to make this money, these institutes had to solve one major problem: time.

Cracking the JEE or NEET requires 10 to 12 hours of rigorous daily preparation.

If a student spends 7 hours sitting in a normal school, they cannot survive the coaching grind.

But why can't normal schools just teach the exact same syllabus?
It comes down to a brutal mismatch in business models.

Schools operate on an "inclusion model" Inclusion Model = Designing curriculum so the average student passes.

Competitive exams operate on a "rejection model" Rejection Model = Designing an exam so hard that 99% fail.

If a normal school started teaching physics at the IIT level, 90% of their students would fail board exams.

Plus, schools cannot afford the ₹50 Lakh+ salaries that star coaching teachers demand.

Because the school curriculum is too basic, parents are forced to look outside.
So, coaching centers created a parallel system.

They built quiet tie-ups with private schools to create the "Dummy School" model Dummy School = A school where a student is enrolled just for a board certificate, but never attends.

The economics are brilliantly brutal.
Parents are forced to pay twice.

They pay a premium fee of ₹1.5 to ₹2 lakhs to the coaching center for actual studying.
Then, they pay a smaller "setting fee" of ₹30,000 to ₹50,000 to the dummy school.

What does the dummy school do for that money?
Absolutely nothing.

They act as a simple rubber stamp.

The school fakes daily attendance, conducts fake practical exams, and hands over the board admit card.

They collect pure profit without spending a rupee on electricity, teachers, or maintenance for that student.

Middlemen often facilitate this, taking a direct commission for every student funneled into a dummy school.

Education in India is no longer about holistic learning.

It has become a highly optimized commercial supply chain.

The coaching center is the factory, and the dummy school is the packaging department.

✍🏻 Mantra Joshi

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