“School without teachers", this used to be the dream of every student going to a strict, disciplined school, during his/her lower classes. None to scold you for wrong doing, no lessons will be taught and one can have many P.T. hours. But little do we realize the deep implications of the seemingly harmless dream.
Many students all over India live with this dream daily and suffer way more than we can imagine. Today one of the issues faced by the Indian education is Teacher absenteeism. Based on the study by International Institute of Educational Planning study on corruption in education, India has a total rate of 2 5% teacher
absenteeism this implies that one out of four students turn up in schools without teachers. The global average of teacher absenteeism is 20% only. This is definitely not a good signal. Teacher absenteeism visibly affects time the students waste in the classroom, but it also impacts the school's capital spent on making other preparations, replacement teachers, and having existing teachers split their attention on twice as many students. According to a report, the exhaust of funds could sum up to as much as 22.5% of the total education resources in India.
This is high time that this situation should be delt with in a mature manner. To begin with teachers in India are paid very low salaries. They are forced to supplement their income with paid tuitions. The tuition system has spread throughout the country.
The situation has become so grim that teachers openly advertise their private tuitions and do not turn up for regular classes. Thus they get the monthly salary and their private tuition fee which sums up to a high amount. Student who take tuitions from the same teacher who teaches in class definitely get more marks and teachers show favoritism to promote their tuition classes.
There are no established systems for teacher recruitment. The teachers are not recruited based on any standard tests or interview. Many times people with influence are recruited directly even without application. This reduces the standard of teachers and indirectly the standard of students as well. Even though a B.Ed. degree is made compulsory, it is not strict. In many schools you will still find a good number of teachers teaching without B.Ed. cases of fake certificates and false claims are also common.
Further there are no policies to award promotions. If there were well laid policies on promotions and other awards for excellence, the teacher would at least turn up to achieve these promotions or awards. Then there are no laws for fair and timely pay.
A teacher from a local school in Kerala says, “I have not received my pay for the past six months. We teachers have made several complaints regarding this. But there is no one to listen to our grievances. I have started taking private classes to meet my day to day needs. Many of my colleagues have done the same. We are helpless. "
“Things get worse after elections. Since the existing government does not care once elected and try to retrieve all the money channelized towards elections, salaries are often not taken care of”, notes another teacher.
The question is what happens when teachers don't turn up to do their duty?
Without teachers you can’t call a school ‘school’. When they do not turn up the students have no means to learn. The school has to recruit more teachers to fill in the positions and the workload on the existing teachers increase. There are cases when there are no teachers specialized in one field.
There are many such schools which lack teachers in English. Thus the students have very poor control over the English language. Similar cases are seen with other subjects. The already low Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) is further reduced with teacher absenteeism. This decrease is not reflected on paper but the individual attention and care cannot be given to students with so less taking care of classes exceeding 60 students. Definitely, students who take time to grasp the concepts fall back. The quality of the educated crowd thus is reduced.
This issue should be taken care of at the earliest. Some of the possible remedies would be, increasing wages. Monitoring the teachers by taking daily attendance and reducing pay in case of absence. Awards and promotions for teachers who do well is a good way to attract teachers. Strict and standard recruitment policies would also increase the level and quality of teachers.
Many students all over India live with this dream daily and suffer way more than we can imagine. Today one of the issues faced by the Indian education is Teacher absenteeism. Based on the study by International Institute of Educational Planning study on corruption in education, India has a total rate of 2 5% teacher
absenteeism this implies that one out of four students turn up in schools without teachers. The global average of teacher absenteeism is 20% only. This is definitely not a good signal. Teacher absenteeism visibly affects time the students waste in the classroom, but it also impacts the school's capital spent on making other preparations, replacement teachers, and having existing teachers split their attention on twice as many students. According to a report, the exhaust of funds could sum up to as much as 22.5% of the total education resources in India.
This is high time that this situation should be delt with in a mature manner. To begin with teachers in India are paid very low salaries. They are forced to supplement their income with paid tuitions. The tuition system has spread throughout the country.
The situation has become so grim that teachers openly advertise their private tuitions and do not turn up for regular classes. Thus they get the monthly salary and their private tuition fee which sums up to a high amount. Student who take tuitions from the same teacher who teaches in class definitely get more marks and teachers show favoritism to promote their tuition classes.
There are no established systems for teacher recruitment. The teachers are not recruited based on any standard tests or interview. Many times people with influence are recruited directly even without application. This reduces the standard of teachers and indirectly the standard of students as well. Even though a B.Ed. degree is made compulsory, it is not strict. In many schools you will still find a good number of teachers teaching without B.Ed. cases of fake certificates and false claims are also common.
Further there are no policies to award promotions. If there were well laid policies on promotions and other awards for excellence, the teacher would at least turn up to achieve these promotions or awards. Then there are no laws for fair and timely pay.
A teacher from a local school in Kerala says, “I have not received my pay for the past six months. We teachers have made several complaints regarding this. But there is no one to listen to our grievances. I have started taking private classes to meet my day to day needs. Many of my colleagues have done the same. We are helpless. "
“Things get worse after elections. Since the existing government does not care once elected and try to retrieve all the money channelized towards elections, salaries are often not taken care of”, notes another teacher.
The question is what happens when teachers don't turn up to do their duty?
Without teachers you can’t call a school ‘school’. When they do not turn up the students have no means to learn. The school has to recruit more teachers to fill in the positions and the workload on the existing teachers increase. There are cases when there are no teachers specialized in one field.
There are many such schools which lack teachers in English. Thus the students have very poor control over the English language. Similar cases are seen with other subjects. The already low Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) is further reduced with teacher absenteeism. This decrease is not reflected on paper but the individual attention and care cannot be given to students with so less taking care of classes exceeding 60 students. Definitely, students who take time to grasp the concepts fall back. The quality of the educated crowd thus is reduced.
This issue should be taken care of at the earliest. Some of the possible remedies would be, increasing wages. Monitoring the teachers by taking daily attendance and reducing pay in case of absence. Awards and promotions for teachers who do well is a good way to attract teachers. Strict and standard recruitment policies would also increase the level and quality of teachers.
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