primary school teachers the twists and turns of ... - ERU Consultants

Version 20 Oct 08, edited finalHealth Survey (NFHS) led to growing cynicism about the validity of thisinformation. Way back in 1996, Madhya Pradesh (MP) conducted a state-widehouse-to-house survey (known as the Lok Sampark Abhiyan) covering 53,460villages, 6.1 million households and 10 million children, which revealed that thesituation with respect to primary education in the state was nowhere near as positiveas was commonly believed. The problem of non-enrolment was found to be quitesevere, especially in tribal hamlets with highly dispersed populations and forchildren from socially disadvantaged communities in non-tribal areas. The stategovernment decided to act on it. More importantly, the survey data was alleged tohave ‘called the bluff’ of system statistics and teachers were blamed for fudging thedata.Very soon other states followed the Madhya Pradesh path. For example, AndhraPradesh carried out a similar survey to ascertain the number of out of schoolchildren and child workers. Gradually, by 2000, the household survey as a tool foreducational planning gained official recognition and when SSA was launched in2001-02, it was built into the programme as a precursor to the ‘bottom-up’ planningprocess. Ironically, teachers were made responsible for conducting the householdsurvey. Remember Malati? She was expected to go from house to house to gatherdata but was later advised by her superior to meet the village pradhan and fill outthe 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 supposedto interact with teachers and students, observe classroom sessions in progress,maybe teach one lesson, look at the notebooks to ascertain how much of the syllabushad been covered and so on. The older teachers we interviewed said that the SI’svisit was an important event impelling teachers to make an effort to cover thesyllabus. But things changed in the 1970s, and today one has a situation where thereis no inspection: the cluster and block officials visit the schools to collect data andlook at registers. For example, a study done by IIM Calcutta found that the SIs inWest Bengal were overloaded and that it was impossible for them to visit all schoolseven once a year. The report noted that ‘management and control at the ground levelwas almost non-existent and nothing was done even after the Ashok MitraCommittee recommended immediate measures to improve management of schoolsand supervision’ (Chhattopadhaya and Reddy 2001). Teachers in Rajasthan said thatschools 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 toget information or give out the forms during monthly meetings. There are manyschools that have not been visited for over a year and even when the BRC or the CRCpersonnel visit the schools, all they do is look at registers, especially those related tomid-day meals.This observation corroborates the findings of an earlier study which found thatteachers in sample schools spent a lot of time filling out forms and in single-teacherschools very little time was devoted to teaching. When the cluster resource personswho are meant to provide academic support to teachers visited the schools, theyended up merely collecting information. Sharma and Ramachandran (forthcoming)point out:The supervision of schools indicated the same dynamic. On the one hand, supervisoryofficers told interviewers that they were engaged in so many tasks that they could notfind time to supervise. On the other hand, discussions with teachers showed that when19