Education sector sheds 6 mn jobs
Hiring may surge in new academic year
While most services sectors have been recovering in the past two quarters, the education sector has been witnessing a different trend. The sector has rather lost 5.4 million jobs by the end of the December quarter. Inter-estingly, the job losses had started even before the lockdown.
However, a silver lining is that once the schools reopen, Covid-19 restrictions may mandate schools to have fewer students in a classroom and this might raise the need for teachers.
The education sector, which had employed 15 million people in 2018 and
2019, had started showing weakness towards the end of 2019, according to a study by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. Employment fell to
14.5 million in the March quarter of 2020, even before lockdown hit all sectors. It further fell to 9.7 million in the June-September 2020 quarters. In the December 2020 quarter employment in education was down to 9.1 million.
From the 2019 levels, the sector has lost close to 6 million jobs.
"In 2019-20, the industry has been witnessing a disruption with the adoption of technology. While new edtech start-ups have been emerging on the one hand, regular institutions have been increasingly embracing technology on the other, which led to lesser demand for manpower. Even the job forecasts for the sector had predicted
lesser hiring," said Shantanu Rooj, founder & CEO, Schoolguru Eduserve.
According to him, it was perceived that personalised care would increase the requirement of teachers by edtech start-ups. But artificial intelligence tools took care of this requirement. Further, AI-based assessments too reduced the need for manpower.
"The lock-down further legitimised online learning, as a shift in mindsets in favour of online happened among the student community. Educational institutions went online during the lockdown and most of them have not started functioning physically yet. Online reduced the requirement of teachers, leading to the decline in jobs," he said.
According to Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder and executive vice president, Teamlease Services,
several institutions in smaller cities have not been operating as earlier since the lockdown. This has impacted jobs of both teachers and support staff.
"Even the contract staff in government institutions were out of job," said Aditya Narayan Mishra, director and CEO of CIEL HR Services.
The situation is expected to continue in the March quarter. The ongoing vaccination drive may help education institutions reopen in the next academic year.
"Then we would probably see a surge in hiring. When institutions reopen, they will have to split students into smaller-sized groups. This will increase the requirement of teachers. Hence we expect the jobs in the sector to bounce back to 2019-20 levels by next academic year. Tech platforms also would be ramping up hiring," said Rooj.