primary school teachers the twists and turns of everyday practice

Version 20 Oct 08, edited final
improving it, our discussions in West Bengal revealed exactly the opposite: the state
has made little progress towards developing a comprehensive teacher-training
strategy. The state did not accept DIET in the late 1990s because of a fear of
‘permanent staff liability’ and it was as recently as 2002 that the DIET scheme was
formally accepted. Funds for training earlier came through DPEP and now they
come from SSA. The SSA directorate conducts training in consultation with WBBPE.
Apparently a pedagogy committee selects the Key Resource Persons. The SCERT
prepared the plan, but has no role in the execution. Responsibility for training of
teachers is spread over different state and district level offices. As in many other
states, in discussions and interviews we heard almost nothing about content and
process of training.
The Third Joint Review Mission of SSA in West Bengal (January 2006) noted:
Training of teachers is a major component for improving quality and an outlay of Rs 58.07 crore
has been approved against which only Rs 1.80 crore has been spent till 31/12/2005. Proposals for
teacher training provide for three categories of training—10 days, 20 days and 60 days
respectively called as in-service, induction and training of untrained teachers. No annual
plan/programme for teachers training have been prepared. The state has not operationalised the
latter two categories of training even though induction of para-teachers is very much required and
even though there are more than 45558 untrained teachers at primary and 18235 teachers at the
upper primary level. SPO is unable to take any view in this matter, as primary and secondary
boards are the authorised bodies in this regard. The progress regarding In-service teacher training
is equally unsatisfactory. So far, training of primary school teachers has been provided on two
modules (English and Health) and no training programmes have been conducted for upper
primary teachers (excepting a brief training on Life Style Education) as relevant training modules
have not been finalised by the Secondary board. Overall, planning and management of teacher
training activities in the state urgently needs to be fixed….
The situation on the ground has hardly changed in the last two years and teachers
and administrators continue to feel disheartened and disillusioned. Teachers
everywhere complain about high pupil-teacher ratios and say that they have a hard
time managing the children. The apex teacher development institution, SCERT, had
one Director and six Fellows—understaffed and inexperienced. DIETs too were
understaffed and by and large there was really no one in the entire educational
bureaucracy or in the academic institutions who had much to say about the skills
and capacities of teachers.
Summing up
I have been a math teacher and now am involved in textbook development. What worries me is that
there is a trend to make mathematics more formal rather than intuitive and child friendly (…) this
was the reason why the confidence of the teachers is undermined. Teachers are even afraid to use
their own language.
I have been in situations where the teacher-training ends up undermining the confidence of the
teacher—when the training does not start by finding out what the teacher knows and what
problems he/she faces in school. When this happens the teachers retreat into the textbook…
(Interview with Krishnan Master, Kerala, May 2008)
The above narrative reveals that despite innovations in some states, the problems
and issues with teacher-training have not changed substantially over the years.
Logistical and management aspects take precedence over content and process issues
which is why despite high budget allocations in many states, what teachers actually
gain from these training sessions is highly questionable. This situation has been
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