Teacher Drought and Absenteeism affecting student prospect

Many humble men send their children to government schools with a dream that they'll have a better future, but when reality strucks them, they're left to bits and pieces. Such is a story of Mainuddin, who is a Class IV student of such a school in Jharkhand. His father  Imtiaaz, a small-time retailer, had dreamt of giving good education to his child at the formative stage and get him admitted to a good school later. “With the education he has  got, I wonder if he will get admission in any good school,” he said, blaming frequent absenteeism of the teacher and poor teaching for the lack of Mainuddin's academic development.

Around 1.5 lakh of 15 lakh schools in the country are run by a single teacher, a disgrace affecting the future of over 80 lakh children. As indicated by a recent government sponsored District Information System of Education report, multi-grade teaching, lack of proper attendance of students and teacher absenteeism have sorely affected the learning outcome in classes. If the sole teacher failed to turn up, the classes remain shut. The student strength of most of these government – run schools (at the primary level) range between 50 and 100. Because of government's ignorance such schools continue to spread across the country, especially in Chhattisgarh,Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Odisha.; if the Right to Education Act was applied effectively, these institutes would have been closed by now.

The minimum requirement of two teachers for every school has been ignored simultaneously. The draft National Education Policy presented on May 25 estimates that there is a shortage of more than five lakh teachers at the  primary level, yet efforts to fill the vacancies or the urgency to do so are imminent. 

Both the Centre and the state governments are blamed for the high proportion of single teacher schools, as reported by experts while monitoring the implementation of the Right to Education Act. Officals in the Ministry of Human Resource Development criticized the tardiness of the local administration to fill the vacancies and ensuring uniform teacher strength across schools. On the  other hand, Ambarish Rai, national convenor of voluntary organisation Right to Education Forum, said states claimed that they lack resources to enroll teachers; which comes as a shock as the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan programme has been receiving higher funding since the enactment of the  Right to Education Act in 2010.

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The programme has received 22,500 crore in this fiscal, a 27 per cent increase over the allocation during the last fiscal.

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