To Sir (or Ma'am) With Love

What does it say about a country where only 2 percent of 750,000 teachers holding a formal Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) degree or a Diploma in Education are able to clear a simple Teacher Eligibility Test that would make them eligible to teach Grades 1 through 8?  Where the results for this year are actually viewed as an improvement over last year, because there was a reduction in those who failed from 99 percent to 98?  Would you really have any hope for that country's education system, or for the future of its children? 

Welcome to India in 2014.  The fact that CBSE's Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) held in January witnessed such dismal results should be a wakeup call for anyone interested in the country's education system. 

As the number of schools in the country, both in the government and private sectors, has increased rapidly over the last decades, the demand for quality teachers has increased exponentially.  Unfortunately, the number and type of teachers needed are just not available.  Implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (more commonly known as the Right to Education Act) alone requires an estimated 1.4 million additional teachers in our classrooms, for just Grades 1 to 8; this doesn’t include the already existing 500,000 vacant positions.  And the teacher training institutes currently available are just not up to the task.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that with the exception of B.El.Ed degree courses or some correspondence courses, most of our regular B.Ed or D.Ed programmes are of one year duration, as compared to other countries where such programmes take at least 3-4 years to complete.  This means that the student's knowledge of her subject is assumed, and the course concentrates – in the limited time it has – on the skills required to be a teacher in the classroom.  Given the reality of most undergraduate degree colleges in the country, this assumption is dangerous, as in many cases graduation is no guarantee of either understanding or knowledge of the subject.  The poor state of higher education thus has its impact on school education, which in turn sends poorly prepared children (from those who remain in the system) to participate in college education, thereby reinforcing the vicious cycle of mediocrity and ineffectiveness.  The situation is compounded by the fact that anyone with a secondary school education is also eligible to sit for the CTET, as long as they have completed, or are in the final year of, a 2-year D.Ed or 4-year B.El.Ed programme; in the former case, there is clearly not enough time to acquire the required subject knowledge.

While there has been much discussion of school education and learning outcomes in recent years, teacher education has not been the focus of that discussion as often as it should have been.  We need to recognise that the teacher is a crucial component of the school system, and that without providing a renewed sense of professionalism, education and self worth to those who take up teaching as a career, we will be hard pressed to make progress in the classroom.  It is time to reinvent teacher education and indeed, teaching as a career, from the ground up, if we are to witness dramatic change in learning outcomes.

The majority of school teachers in India are employed in the government sector, since nearly 85 percent schools are under government management.  Yet it is not as if the issue of quality is confined only to this group.  With few exceptions, most private schools also suffer from the same problems.  During the time that I ran the premium Millennium schools, it never failed to surprise me that senior teachers (and sometimes even Principals!) could be so careless, sloppy and unprofessional.  I sat through a number of classes in various schools, and came away appalled at the fact that teachers of this standard were actually allowed to stand up in class and influence young minds.

What then do we need to do to bring about meaningful change?  There are several possibilities, but the following would probably be good first steps:

·         There is a strong case for partially decentralising teacher education to the States, and allowing them to determine the curriculum and duration of the B.Ed courses conducted in their jurisdictions.  This would allow more contextually relevant degree courses to develop, with training colleges free to create a cadre of teachers focused on the needs of their State.

·         The duration of B.Ed courses needs to increase, in line with international practice, and in order to incorporate some subject learning as well.  This would ensure that students graduating from the programme would also carry with them the much needed subject skills.

·         Under training teachers need more practical exposure to classrooms and children, in order to develop their teaching and management skills.  This means a much closer relationship between schools and colleges and/or teacher education institutions.

·         The number of teacher training institutions needs to increase drastically; at the same time, ensuring quality remains a strong concern.  We need to review the multi-zillion clearances needed to start such institutions and move towards a system of single-window approvals.

·         As in any other profession, intensive periodic in-service training programmes need to be planned that allow teachers to hone their skills and revise basics; as in the US, we may eventually consider a licensing system and periodic examinations that keep valid a teacher's license to teach.  It may be noted that the kind of superficial 20-day in-service training practiced under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) certainly does not meet the needs of continuing education for teachers.

·         We need to find ways to reduce the social and economic distance between teacher and taught; this means more emphasis on recruiting local teachers, who come from the community they teach. This would additionally have the advantage of ensuring more or less regular availability of the teacher in the classroom; if she belongs to the area, there are fewer incentives for her to go AWOL.

·         Bring back the school inspectorate system that we have systematically destroyed through projects and disuse.  The Schools Inspector played a very significant role in ensuring that quality in the classroom was maintained; we need to recreate a similar system of regular monitoring to ensure enough time-on-task as well as improvements in outcomes.

·         Stop just talking about closer linkages between the District Institutes of Education and Training (DIET) and SSA structures and actually do something about them.  In addition, project structures like SSA need to eventually move into the State Education Departments so that there is greater ownership of the education bureaucracy, and a single, holistic approach to school education.

·         Move away from seniority as the only criteria for promotion and career advancement to a system that takes merit and performance into account, and make teaching an attractive profession for bright young people.

Teachers are the backbone of the education system; if they are dysfunctional, so is the system.  The time to make these changes is now.  Otherwise we will see many more anguished letters like this one – http://goo.gl/gjqh66.  To me, this is a heart-breaking example of everything that is wrong with our schools and teachers.