primary school teachers the twists and turns of everyday practice

Version 20 Oct 08, edited final
Health Survey (NFHS) led to growing cynicism about the validity of this
information. Way back in 1996, Madhya Pradesh (MP) conducted a state-wide
house-to-house survey (known as the Lok Sampark Abhiyan) covering 53,460
villages, 6.1 million households and 10 million children, which revealed that the
situation with respect to primary education in the state was nowhere near as positive
as was commonly believed. The problem of non-enrolment was found to be quite
severe, especially in tribal hamlets with highly dispersed populations and for
children from socially disadvantaged communities in non-tribal areas. The state
government decided to act on it. More importantly, the survey data was alleged to
have ‘called the bluff’ of system statistics and teachers were blamed for fudging the
data.
Very soon other states followed the Madhya Pradesh path. For example, Andhra
Pradesh carried out a similar survey to ascertain the number of out of school
children and child workers. Gradually, by 2000, the household survey as a tool for
educational planning gained official recognition and when SSA was launched in
2001-02, it was built into the programme as a precursor to the ‘bottom-up’ planning
process. Ironically, teachers were made responsible for conducting the household
survey. Remember Malati? She was expected to go from house to house to gather
data but was later advised by her superior to meet the village pradhan and fill out
the forms, making sure the number of out of school children went down.
Till the late 1960s schools were visited by a School Inspector (SI) who was supposed
to interact with teachers and students, observe classroom sessions in progress,
maybe teach one lesson, look at the notebooks to ascertain how much of the syllabus
had been covered and so on. The older teachers we interviewed said that the SI’s
visit was an important event impelling teachers to make an effort to cover the
syllabus. But things changed in the 1970s, and today one has a situation where there
is no inspection: the cluster and block officials visit the schools to collect data and
look at registers. For example, a study done by IIM Calcutta found that the SIs in
West Bengal were overloaded and that it was impossible for them to visit all schools
even once a year. The report noted that ‘management and control at the ground level
was almost non-existent and nothing was done even after the Ashok Mitra
Committee recommended immediate measures to improve management of schools
and supervision’ (Chhattopadhaya and Reddy 2001). Teachers in Rajasthan said that
schools located in rural areas, especially those that are not on the main trunk routes,
are rarely visited. With the coming of the mobile phone, block level officials call to
get information or give out the forms during monthly meetings. There are many
schools that have not been visited for over a year and even when the BRC or the CRC
personnel visit the schools, all they do is look at registers, especially those related to
mid-day meals.
This observation corroborates the findings of an earlier study which found that
teachers in sample schools spent a lot of time filling out forms and in single-teacher
schools very little time was devoted to teaching. When the cluster resource persons
who are meant to provide academic support to teachers visited the schools, they
ended up merely collecting information. Sharma and Ramachandran (forthcoming)
point out:
The supervision of schools indicated the same dynamic. On the one hand, supervisory
officers told interviewers that they were engaged in so many tasks that they could not
find time to supervise. On the other hand, discussions with teachers showed that when
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