Acute shortage of primary teachers in India; UP, Bihar worst-hit states

Despite its attempts to universalise education with the Right to Education (RTE), new data shows that India’s schools still fall short of 5.86 lakh primary-level teachers and 3.5 lakh upper primary level teachers.

Despite its attempts to universalise education with the Right to Education (RTE), new data shows that India’s schools still fall short of 5.86 lakh primary-level teachers and 3.5 lakh upper primary level teachers.

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The universalisation of elementary education — that leads to a better trained work force and aware citizenry and also bolsters a nation’s score in the human development index, which has literacy as a criterion — is a goal of state policy.

Smriti Irani, human resource development minister, shared this data for all 35 states and union territories with the Lok Sabha a few days back in response to a question regarding teacher vacancies.

The state-wise break-up of the data shows that two of India’s most populous and backward states — UP and Bihar — account for a large proportion of the shortfall.

UP alone is short of 2.52 lakh teachers at the primary level and 55,859 teachers at the upper primary level. Bihar has a shortfall of 1.14 lakh and 82,303 at the two levels.

The RTE, that became functional in 2010, also prescribes pupil-teacher ratios.

From classes 1 to 5, there need to be two teachers for up to 60 children, three teachers for up to 61-90 students, four teachers for up to 91-120 children and five for 121-200 children.

For classes 6 to 8 there needs to be one teacher per class. There also needs to be one teacher for every 35 children at this level.