primary school teachers the twists and turns of everyday practice

Version 20 Oct 08, edited final
(Kingdon 1996). Further, the automatic pass procedure in primary schools in many
states means that there is no systematic way of evaluating student learning, let alone
linking it to teachers’ performance.
At the same time, a multiplicity of factors act as disincentives by actively
discouraging teachers from developing or adopting creative teaching practices. Two
of these have already been discussed above: training methodologies that discourage
questioning, discussion and analysis by teachers, expecting them to apply training
content exactly as they received it rather than adapting it to the needs of specific
learners; and a supervisory system focused on collection of administrative data and
on ensuring that schools and school personnel conform to standards and procedures
developed elsewhere. An additional powerful disincentive is created by the informal
system of patronage and rent-seeking in operation throughout the educational
system, which obliges teachers, willingly or unwillingly, to dedicate time and effort
to keep local politicians and elites happy, given that they control the limited rewards
obtainable within the system—in particular, transfers to desired locations.
Accountability
To whom, then, are elementary school teachers accountable for the quality of
learning outcomes? That is, who within the system has the authority and the ability
to define what constitutes good teaching practice, evaluate whether teachers are
doing a good job, reward those who are, and sanction those who are not? The short
answer to this question is: nobody.
‘Good teaching practice’ is not evaluated in primary schools in India: conformity to
rules and regulations entirely unrelated to student learning is.
Within the school, head teachers—where these exist—exert limited authority over
teachers, since promotions, transfers and other decisions are taken elsewhere.
Supervisory personnel are confined primarily to administrative inspections and, as
we have seen, have been known to exert a negative influence on innovative teaching
practice. Local communities do not have the skills to undertake this kind of
professional evaluation of teachers. District education authorities often operate on
the basis of political or administrative, rather than educational, criteria.
Autonomy
Teacher autonomy and accountability are in many ways two sides of the same coin.
Whereas accountability looks at whom teachers answer to in terms of the quality of
their professional performance, autonomy identifies the ways in which teachers
themselves have the flexibility to adapt what they do in the classroom to the specific
needs and context of their students. We have seen in the earlier chapters of this
booklet that teachers are not expected to exercise their own judgement in
determining how best to teach: since both content and instructional methods are
defined elsewhere, attempts to deviate from these are actively discouraged. Teachers
are expected to utilise innovations developed at higher levels of the system,
regardless of practical constraints on their implementation.
The attempt to reduce the educational experience (today acknowledged, at least in
theory, to be an interactive process, rather than the mechanical transmission of
knowledge) to the availability of a ‘least common denominator’ series of predefined
inputs, regardless of context, does not, however, guarantee a minimum level of
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