News
More than 1 lakh govt schools in India functioning with only 1 teacher.
The HRD Ministry has revealed that over 100,000 primary and secondary schools in the country have just 1 teacher each. The sole teacher has to fulfil different roles like an administrator, clerical staff, mid-day meal cook & server, etc. resulting in reduced efficiency of the teacher.
NGO, Pratham has been doing exemplary work by showing the mirror to the services offered in the education sector, by both private players and the government by dishing out accurate statistics. Poor learning levels, teacher absenteeism and a host of other issues have become a regular in the Annual Status of Education Reports released by the NGO.
Compounding the already troubled image of the education sector is the latest statistic revealed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development that over 100,000 primary and secondary schools in the country have just one teacher each. Four of the largest states of India top this shameful list with Madhya Pradesh (having 17,874 such schools), Uttar Pradesh (17,602), Rajasthan (13,575) and Andhra Pradesh (9,540) ranking the lowest.
Needless to say the teacher no longer remains an instructor of the syllabus but an administrator, clerical staff, mid-day meal cook & server, etc. all rolled into one. This severely tests the teacher’s efficiency which is already challenged due to being the sole teaching staff. In the last 4 years the pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) and classroom-teacher ratio (CTR) has improved considerably in Madhya Pradesh from 19% in 2010 to approximately 48.5% in 2014. However, experts attribute it to the proliferation of private schools. In Uttar Pradesh the PTR has more or less stagnated with only 19% schools meeting the RTE requirement in 2014 compared to 16% in 2010.
India has over 25 crore population in the school-age group (6-15 years)—that’s the largest such population in the world—a potential asset if honed properly can single handedly become the driver for economic growth for an entire generation. However, the state is failing the children by not being able to provide quality education, educators and in some cases infrastructure. This can have serious repercussions including but not limited to greater unemployment, increased crime rate and lastly a hit to the economic potential. While states are regularly undertaking teacher recruitment drives but it seems like an exercise in increasing the numbers than taking in teachers for their skill and teaching aptitude. Another solution maybe to recruit parateachers on a contractual basis like Bihar does. The final outcome rests on how consistently the government pursues the agenda of getting quality teachers on board with the right aptitude to turn this human capital into an asset.
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