primary school teachers the twists and turns of everyday practice

Version 20 Oct 08, edited final
children’s education, especially girls’ education.
These problems are compounded by the innovative excuses that our teachers often cook up—
for even the smallest, slightest illness, they get a medical certificate and get themselves
attached or transferred to town schools or schools near their villages (…) Thus, you will
always find a shortage in rural areas, and an excess of teachers in the town areas.
In Kargil, you’ll find people from different traditions and cultures, who speak different
languages. These include Purik, Shina, Balti, Dardi and Zanskari. This diversity of spoken
languages also creates its own difficulties and challenges. It comes in the way of
communicating with each other and understanding each other. Our officers do not consider
these complexities in their enthusiasm for transferring and attaching teachers for their short
term gains.
In such a situation, where many schools have become an ‘adda’ for the transfer and
attachment of such teachers, even those teachers who want to work hard/well, are not
provided the opportunity to do so. What is to become of those poor children who come to
these schools? Their hopes and dreams are crushed….
(A teacher in Kargil Block, Jammu and Kashmir, April 2008).
(Source: Kargil Education Strategy Document 2008).
There are two principal problems with the issue of teacher transfers. The first
problem, well-known and much-discussed, is that of institutional corruption:
obviously teachers can only manipulate the system when the latter permits
‘informal’ (or corrupt) practices to exist. The second and equally important problem
is that there are no educational criteria by which teachers can apply for a desired
transfer. In other words, if effective teaching practice (however measured) were
linked to teachers’ ability to access desired postings this could have the effect of
both catalysing better teaching and diminishing the importance of ‘informal
channels’ within the system. This, of course, requires that educational outcomes be
placed at the centre of the decision-making criteria affecting teachers.
Thankfully the situation is not as dismal everywhere. In Tamil Nadu, teachers’ nonteaching
duties are restricted to election and census duties. Unlike Rajasthan and
many other states the DM does not have overarching powers over the teachers, and
in 2006 non-teaching duties accounted for only 2.66 per cent of working days spent
on educational work. The government started transfer counselling in 1988 and for
the past 20 years transfers occur only when there is a vacancy. The chain of
command is also clear and teachers are not expected to report to multiple authorities.
This was also echoed in Kerala, where numerous school-level support structures
such as Parent Teacher Associations, School Resource Groups, School Support
Groups and Local Resource Groups work actively with teachers, the District
Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs) and BRCs to promote ‘lots of public
debate’ at the community level on educational processes and outcomes. The long
history of public involvement in education in the state has been catalysed by the
Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP) through its work on science popularisation
since the 1960s. In the last 10-12 years, the ‘People’s Planning Process’ has brought
the panchayat to the forefront. Significant fiscal decentralisation has taken place, and
the three-tier Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) have played a key role in education
as part of their local level planning and development processes. In Thrissur, for
instance, the Gram and District Panchayats have come together to organise training
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