Hey Teacher!
Posted by Ninad on April 19, 2010 under All Posts | 
Read the First Comment
With the Right to Education Act, demand for teachers in primary schools will increase dramatically.
It is estimated that around 510,000 additional teachers are required within the next couple of years.
In addition to this, there are around 120,000 primary schools in the country with only one teacher. If we need to merely add one more teacher in each of these schools to improve the learning experience, there will an additional demand for 120,000 teachers.
Where will these schools get so many teachers?
Also, the shortfall for teachers is higher in the rural sector. So, how will schools in the rural sector get so many teachers?
Over the past so many years, the teaching profession has not managed to attract the best of talent partly due to poor pay and also due to poor working conditions.
Due to the huge demand for teachers, it is possible that the compensation levels of teachers may go up, especially in private schools. Schools in cities are witnessing this phenomenon where the salaries for teachers are rising every year and schools are faced with attrition.
Many school managements complain that the teacher training imparted to teachers is woefully inadequate and the schools need to re-train the qualified teachers.
Hence, along with setting up large number of schools, government needs to push the agenda on setting up a large number of teacher training colleges. Indeed, the government should push for a PPP model in teacher training – lest we face a scenario of schools sans teachers!
Ayan said,
Government should indeed adopt a PPP model in teacher training, starting from primary going up to secondary education. Because the huge increment in primary student base will have an effect on secondary education scenario also. The 8 million who don’t visit a school (in your previous blog) will now have access to primary education and even if 20% of them opt for secondary education, our secondary system will see a rise of 1.6 million students.
The country’s need for 630,000 teachers for primary in next 2 yrs opens up an excellent opportunity for organizations in allied education business. This also gives them a chance to enhance their contribution towards society. Apart from setting up institutions for teacher training, there can be a huge opportunity to assess these teachers before and after the training. In future, if these institutes start getting more applicants than they can handle, there will be an opportunity for creating a national level entrance test of all applicants. Similarly there can be a national level recruitment test for teachers (like we have UGC-NET for college teachers), because a robust teacher recruitment process is an essential condition for having a fundamentally strong education system.
Add A Comment