Nearly 1 lakh schools have just one teacher each
Ashok Kumar is a headmaster, class teacher and office staffer all rolled in one at a primary school in Bechutola, Bihta, barely 50km from Patna. The school, likewise, is a single room that accommodates 80 students from classes one to five.
“Nothing has changed since I began working here in 2003. I try to teach by segregating students. At times, I ask some of them to sit outside,” says the teacher, who is trying to acquire a graduation degree through correspondence.
Last month, CM Nitish Kumar wondered why school attendance remained low despite his government dedicating 20% of the annual budget to education. A visit to this humble school in Bihta should provide an answer.
Over 800 km east of Patna stands Bal Vihar, another singleteacher primary school. Though it is located in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, its infrastructure is nothing to write home about. The burden of teaching five classes with two dozen children in a single room rests squarely on the shoulders of Pavan Kishor Mishra. Mishra, who is physically challenged, follows the ‘one day-one subject’ principle. So, mathematics is taught on Monday, English on Tuesday, Hindi on Wednesday, science on Thursday, and so on.
Kumar and Mishra are no anomaly in the country’s education system, which has 97,923 single-teacher primary and secondary schools. According to data compiled by the Unified District Information System of Education, Madhya Pradesh topped the 2015-16 list with 18,190 such institutions — followed by Uttar Pradesh with 15,669 and Rajasthan with 12,029. Of these, about 82,000 are primary schools.
Under the Right to Education guidelines, there has to be one teacher for every 30-35 students in government and private schools. However, data provided by the government paints a picture that’s light years from rosy.
“While single-teacher schools were introduced to address the educational needs of children in marginalised and remote habitations, they compromise the basic parameters of quality education. Such institutions jeopardise factors such as classroom transactions, individualised attention to children, and continuous and comprehensive evaluation — all of which are essential. Shortage of teachers, main reason for the existence of such schools, is a concern in many states,” says Komal Ganotra, director, policy and advocacy, Child Rights and You.
The effectiveness of singleteacher schools is anybody’s guess. When A Madhusudha Reddy — the 57-year-old teacher at the mandal parishad primary school at Inamguda village in Telangana’s Ranga Reddy district — falls ill, as many as 23 students get a holiday.
In the 2017 budget, the NDA government unveiled a system to measure annual learning outcomes at schools. “That’s easier said than done in a country with nearly a lakh single-teacher schools. We failed miserably at achieving our millennium development goals of effecting universal primary education by 2015. If adequate measures are not taken, this dream will remain unfulfilled even as late as 2030,” says Anisha Ghosh, programme officer, children and governance, Centre for Child Rights.
Upendra Kushwaha, Union minister of state for human resource development, recently sought to shift the blame by saying recruitments, service conditions and redeployment of teachers lie primarily in the domain of state governments.
“However, the Centre provides financial assistance to state governments for additional teachers under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan to maintain pupil-teacher ratio. The Centre is consistently pursuing the matter of expeditious recruitment and redeployment of teachers...” he said in Parliament.