Technology must build on a strong foundation

Instead of digital blackboards, the HRD minister must focus on teachers

At a national workshop on school education held in New Delhi earlier this week, Union human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar said the day is not far “when there will be digital blackboards in all class rooms in schools in the country”. His dream of equipping schools, many of them in far-flung areas without basic amenities, with such tools (found mostly in private ‘SMART’ schools), is in sync with the NDA government’s vision of harnessing digital power to push India’s development processes . The minister, however, is putting the cart before the horse. Fancy tools cannot improve dismal learning levels of India’s students unless the State ensures the basic requirements of students are met: Infrastructure, better quality text books, and well trained, motivated teachers.

One of the key factors for such low learning levels is the lack of teachers who can teach. India has 16,000 teacher education institutes with 1.3 million seats. The sheer number of institutes makes it difficult to improve their quality. The majority of the teachers who graduate from these institutions don’t make the cut. Worse, there are no centres of excellence in teacher education. According to MHRD, there is a shortage of 1.2 million teachers . The shortage of teachers and poor coverage of in-service training only weakens the delivery capacity of schools, many of which are dealing with first-generation learners.

If teachers are neglected, so are the principals . As a report by the Central Square Foundation points out, principals are chosen based on seniority and view their role as administrators rather than leaders. Besides these problems, the school academic support system is burdened with other administrative tasks. The support structure for teachers needs to be revitalised and focused on the vision of classroom change. Digital Blackboards can wait a bit longer.although we shouldn’t forget them