Desperately seeking educators

On the occasion of Teachers’ Day which commemorates the birth anniversary of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, it is pertinent to examine the state of affairs of educators in the post-pandemic world. In June, the kindergarten wing of as many as 2,381 government run schools In Tamil Nadu had been shut down due to a shortage of teachers. As per UNESCO’s ‘No Teacher, No Class: State of Education Report for India-2021’, out of the 59,152 private-run schools in the State, 2,631 have just one teacher. And 87% of these schools are located in rural Tamil Nadu, which paints a depressing picture of the quality of education imparted here. However, the government claims that there are no single teacher schools in the State.

The Right to Education Act mandates that a pupil teacher ratio of 30:1 must be maintained for class 1-5 whereas a ratio of 35:1 must be maintained for class 6-8. This ratio has also been violated in many instances in TN. The report also highlights that a major chunk of teachers in pre-primary, primary and upper primary grades are unqualified as they neither possess an academic degree like a graduate or PG degree or a professional degree like a B.Ed or even a basic teachers training certificate.

About 1.96% pre-primary teachers in TN are under-qualified while 0.24% and 0.13% teachers handling secondary and higher secondary level grades respectively, are under-qualified as well. Apart from setting aside a big portion of the State budget for education programmes, stakeholders have called for a stringent vetting process for the appointment of teachers. Foolproof entrance examinations, panel-based interviews and group discussions as seen in MBA colleges, and multi-level upskilling initiatives, along with upgradation of pay scales as per qualification, are imperative to transform the teaching landscape of government run schools in the State.

The winds of change are blowing in other directions as well. Last week, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal inaugurated India’s first ‘government-run virtual school’ in Delhi. The institution is being pitched as a means to make education affordable and accessible. Kejriwal was called out by netizens who said the Delhi Model Virtual School was certainly not the first purely online school in India.

In August last year, the Centre had launched the National Institute of Open Schooling. The digital schooling system was meant for students unable to attend a brick-and-mortar school. The development comes on the back of two years of learning from the pandemic, which had compelled students to learn from home, literally turning every educational institution into an online school.

But the experience of homeschooling was bittersweet, not least with regard to the absence of actual face to face interactions between the students and faculties. For the youngest of the lot, what was lost was the social experience of institutionalised learning, where the initial years are honed by interactivity, play and communication, facilitated by that human component that we take for granted — teachers.

To be fair, two-dimensional images of a teacher projected by a smartphone or laptop screen cannot really cut it when it comes to dealing with a cranky four year old. Even for senior students, the lack of real-time learning was acutely felt, as thousands found it hard to crack major exams, in spite of truncation of syllabus. There are no two ways about it. The future of a nation hinges on the quality of education disseminated to its youngsters. And if we continue treating our teachers like second class citizens, we can be assured, we might be unable to add any valuable human capital to our national talent pool in the years to come.

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