Posted by Ninad on April 19, 2010 under All Posts | 
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!
Posted by Ninad on July 29, 2009 under All Posts |
I had earlier blogged on the problem of shortage of teachers.
Here are some possible solutions:
- Para teachers: To tackle the problem of both teacher shortage and teacher absenteeism through these para teachers, a project called the ‘Shiksha Karmi Project’ was implemented in Rajasthan. This has been reasonably successful.Para teachers are generally members of the same community in which they teach, and therefore, share many of the experiences and cultural practices of their students, including their primary languages and cultural practices.
- E-learning: The promise of delivering education through eLearning has received a lot of hype. It has really not delivered as much. However, things have changed now. Technology is cheaper, broadband is reaching all the corners of India and PCs are becoming ubiquitous. This medium can never really replace classroom teaching. However, it can supplement it by using eLearning methods for some expert teaching done in a centralized manner.
- Pooling: Schools in the same vicinity need to collaborate more in terms of sharing of best practices and also possible sharing of teacher resources. Pooling of teachers for a group of schools can help those schools where there are temporary deficiencies.
- Youtube: Many teachers in the US record their lectures and make it available for everyone on Youtube. It is truly an economical medium of spreading knowledge. Why not embrace this in India as well?
- IIT for teachers training: Training for school teachers is done in Teachers training Colleges. Many of them do not have adequate infrastructure and have trainers of poor quality. When we can have IITs for engineers and IIMs for MBA students, why can’t we have an institute of a similar caliber to train teachers?
These are some of my thoughts. Do you have any ideas?
Posted by Ninad on July 27, 2009 under All Posts |
The education sector has received a lot of focus and new schools and colleges are being planned every day. Buildings are being built with good quality classrooms, laboratories and other facilities. But, where are the teachers?
If there is one profession in India which will face an acute shortage, it is this – the teaching profession. About 22 lakh new school teachers are required in the next 3 years. Where will they come from?
Just look at the some of the damning statistics:
- Engineering colleges face a shortage of nearly 30 per cent of teachers
- Nearly 1/5th of the total primary schools are single teacher schools. Only one teacher per school!
- Teacher absence ratio in primary schools ranges from 15 to 40 per cent.
- Kerala has an average of 6 teachers in a primary school. In Jharkhand it is less than 2 and 500 schools in U.P. do not have a single teacher.
Teacher shortage is really a symptom of a larger problem which has not been addressed for a long time. Salaries for teachers have remained stagnant for a long time. In fact, salaries offered by industry and particularly the IT industry have skyrocketed in the past few years.
In a unique solution to the persistent problem of faculty crunch, the batch of 1982 of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) on Monday presented a ‘Legacy Gift’ of Rs 3 lakh to each of the faculty members who recently joined IIT-B. This can be done only by a limited number of institutions.
So, are there any possible solutions to this problem? If you have any thoughts, write in…
