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

Version 20 Oct 08, edited finalIWhy a study on teachers?Most debates and discussions on India’s growth story or poverty levels or increasingsocial strife invariably veer around to education: the lack of it, its relevance intoday’s world, its quality and content and the state of our schools. As the debategathers momentum a blame game begins. Some blame the government machinery;others point a finger at the corruption of institutions or the politicisation of content(curriculum). All analyses, however, agree on one factor—the importance ofteachers. We bemoan the quality and dedication of the teaching community and inthe same breath admit that the teacher in India is but a cog in a hierarchicaladministration, a powerless pawn in an intricate game of electoral politics. Thisambivalence is not new, but what is new is the hopelessness that permeates thediscourse across the country. At one level we pin our hopes on education;simultaneously, we grudgingly admit that nothing short of a systemic overhaul willdo.A great deal has been written about teachers in India and close to 20 commission andcommittee reports have been brought out by the government in the last 30 years (seereference annexure for a listing). Every few years yet another high level committee isset up to review different aspects of education—it gives detailed recommendationsand there is even some debate on it. The process then runs cold. The reports talk ofyet another effort made by the government, adding to the long list of documents thatare quoted.Some changes can indeed be observed on the ground. Teachers’ salaries haveincreased sharply in recent years, making regular teaching positions highly soughtafter; and in-service teacher-training has become a regular and important activity inevery state. Yet, the available evidence from every part of the country clearlydemonstrates that students are not learning. In particular from 2006, when the firstAnnual Survey of Education Report (ASER) was released, there has been increasingpublic debate on the abysmally low learning levels in primary schools, asexemplified by children’s inability to read a short paragraph or solve a simpledivision problem.One set of arguments places the responsibility for this situation squarely on theteachers themselves. If inputs received by teachers such as pay scales and trainingprogrammes, have improved and yet educational outcomes remain abysmally poor,the reasoning goes, then teachers themselves are clearly to blame. The media oftenportrays teachers, especially in government primary schools, as a cadre ofgovernment employees who get good salaries but do little work. In recent yearsthere has been a great deal of public anger against teachers; many view themushrooming tuition centres run by teachers during and after school hours as theprivatisation of a public service. Recent research has generated alarming statistics onteacher absence in Indian primary schools and has also highlighted inadequatecontent knowledge and pedagogical skills among teachers. In this view, what isrequired is increased accountability from teachers, who need to be held responsiblefor the outcomes of their work.A second set of arguments, often utilised by teachers themselves and alsodocumented by a range of research reports and analyses, blames the larger politicaland bureaucratic environment within which teachers operate. Teachers across the5