primary school teachers the twists and turns of everyday practice

Version 20 Oct 08, edited final
schools managed by contract teachers are likely to be less endowed in terms of
infrastructure and basic amenities.
All these teachers—regular teachers, those in single-teacher schools, those managing
more than 60 children in one classroom, those who grapple with multiple languages
in the community and those who have to face the reality of seasonal migration and
long absenteeism—need someone they can reach out to, above all for continuous and
dependable academic support. Yet the fact remains that the training plan emanates
from above. It remains uniform and undifferentiated whether it originated in the
DPEP days of district planning or during the SSA era of bottom-up and need-based
planning.
Notwithstanding the rhetoric of policy and programme documents, of review
mission reports and the curriculum framework it is clear that the ‘needs’ that are
driving the training regime are definitely not the needs of the teacher. The process on
the ground may be more inclusive in Tamil Nadu and Kerala as compared to other
states, but even in these states the teachers are not involved in identifying their
training needs. This ‘top down’ process draws its mandate from something quite
different—annual plans and budget and turf wars. One administrator in
Maharashtra said that it is the state government that has to meet its training target to
access SSA funds. So, is it their need that is driving the training regime rather than
the needs of the teachers?
Who is a good trainer?
Another important conclusion relates to the quality of those responsible for
imparting training. Successive assessments of the DIET programme point out that
DIET was conceived as the primary mechanism for bringing teacher-training and
support activities closer to the schools. In practice, administrative rather than
educational logic was utilised to specify staffing patterns for these new institutions,
with advanced academic qualifications taking precedence over teaching experience
at the elementary level. Dyer (2004) argues that:
There is a need for comprehensive professional training for DIET staff to help them be effective by
developing the skills, knowledge and understandings appropriate for primary teacher educators.
Thus, there is a need to reconsider the recruitment rules that demand double Masters degrees for
DIET posts, and therefore exclude most primary teachers from becoming formal teacher educators,
as primary teachers are rarely university graduates.
Rashmi Sharma reinforces this argument:
Nowhere was the low regard for professionalism more apparent than in the fact that in both the
states (AP and Rajasthan), little attempt was made to staff the SCERTs and the DIETs on the
basis of professional logic. The DIETS and SCERTs (organizations which make curriculum and
textbooks and are expected to be academic leaders), did not have personnel with experience or
expertise in elementary education. Instead, officials and high school teachers of appropriate
seniority, rather than suitable skills, were posted in DIETs and SCERT/SIERT (in Sharma and
Ramachandran, forthcoming).
A never ending story
In normal DPEP or SSA training, the pattern is predictable. A module is prepared
and the cascade mode is unleashed. In DPEP the state directorate was in the driving
seat with some help from Ed. CIL and resource persons (SCERT and DIETs were not
always involved). In SSA too the administrator who heads the project in the state
calls the shots—SCERT, DIET and all other bodies take orders from the
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