State of education: Untrained, underpaid teachers, students with declining learning ability

India has one of the world’s biggest public-funded school education systems with around 5.8 million teachers in 1.3 million schools, but the quality of education is falling as enrollment is shifting from public to private schools.

Updated on: Sep 5, 2013, 12:14:52 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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On Teacher’s Day on Thursday, the status of education 2012 report brought out by an NGO paints a sorry picture of India’s education system. Sample these: 53% of Class 5 students were unable to read Class 2-level text while 47% of Class 5 children could not solve simple two-digit subtraction problems. Ironically, 2012 was declared as the year of mathematics in India.

India is counted among the world’s biggest public-funded school education systems and has around 5.8 million teachers in 1.3 million schools. However, only 75% of the teachers are trained, a drastic fall from 2008 when the figure stood at 90%.

The study holds this lack of training responsible to a large extent for the falling levels of learning among students.

“There are 8.1 lakh untrained teachers in the country, with four states -- Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal -- accounting for 72% of them,” a planning commission report on the 12th five year-plan said.

This number does not include a large number of ad-hoc teachers who are virtually running primary schools in many of these states.

Around 40% teachers in primary schools in educationally-backward states such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and UP have been appointed on temporary basis. Many of them have studied till higher secondary and draw a paltry salary of about R5,000 to R7,000 per month.

On an average, three teachers are in-charge of five classes at the primary level as against the Right to Education norm of at least one teacher per class. Around 10% of schools with more than 150 students have just one teacher for everything – administration, teaching and ensuring healthy mid-day meals.

“A highly motivated and skilled teacher can bring a lot of difference to the life of a child. Education is not only about text books but also about a child’s ability to think and innovate,” said Madhav Chavan, chairman of the NGO, Pratham.

To improve education standards, experts said the government should consider senior secondary schools as training grounds for primary school teachers and skill upgradation. Teachers’ skill set needs to be tested regularly and students should participate in teachers’ performance appraisals. Higher salaries and permanent jobs should be used as motivational tools.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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