You may a parent of a child or you may be a youth, who sees many things wanting in the country’s and Uttarakhand’s School education; But don’t know what to do, as you are unaware of your rights -- The rights given to you by the Indian Constitution.

Below are a few important things, you should be knowing about Right To Education Act (RTE):

1) The RTE Act requires that a school with less than 60 students have at least two teachers. If the school has 90 students, then the teacher count should go to 3. That is, for every additional 30 students, one teacher should be added.

2) Even for large schools, with over 200 students, the pupil-teacher ratio must never exceed 40. That is the school should have 1 teacher for every 40 students.

3) The Right to Education Act requires that all elementary school teachers should have the BEd degree they needed before the law came into force. They should have also cleared a teacher eligibility test within five years of joining. The test is aimed at improving the standard of teaching,

The Reality:

1) Only 40% of schools in India meet the pupil-teacher ratios required by the RTE Act. Like everything else, some states which are doing exceptionally well in this regard are making the average reflect positively for those states, which are failing in their responsibility. For instance, Only 15% of elementary schools in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand have adequate teachers. This is much lower than the national average. With the percentage dropping even further to just 5% for Bihar. State of Kerala, which faultlessly performs well in every such metric; has 94% schools meeting the required ratio.

2) A crippling shortage of teachers: The Right to Education Act requires that all elementary school teachers should have the BEd degree they needed before the law came into force. They should have also cleared a teacher eligibility test within five years of joining. The test is aimed at improving the standard of teaching, but, this is resulting in shortage of teachers in the country.

3) Growing Absenteeism among teachers: Absenteeism among teachers increased nationally from 11% in 2009 to 14% in 2011.

What will it mean, if the country wants to conform to the RTE norms:

To fulfill the norms in RTE, India needs to hire 6 Lakh teachers. The stipulated deadline of September 31, 2010, for hiring these teachers is long gone. Even states, which are often promoted by vested groups and political parties to have a great record on development indices; appear to be failing on RTE. For instance, the state of Gujarat needs to hire over 20,000 teachers to meet the RTE Act norms. The state hired 10,000 teachers last year and still has to recruit 10,000 more teachers.

Reasons for the poor performance on pillars of RTE:

Poor performance in the area of school education is a mix of all the three factors shared above. That’s there’s shortage of trained teachers and teachers remain absent from schools for real and superficial reasons. For instance, in the states like Assam, where there’s an acute shortage of teachers, and the state needs to hire 95,000 teachers to meet the RTE norms. Assam had provisionally hired 28,000 teachers. Such is the shortage of trained teachers in Assam that a single teacher is found to be teaching in more than one school or teaching upto 5 standards simultaneously.

If Assam chooses to fill all these vacancies using its current teacher training facilities; it will take another 38 years to hire 95000 teachers.

Hence in states like Assam, if a teacher, misses one school for his engagement in another; or misses on his teaching for some non-teaching work; then it can be understood.

But in states like Uttarakhand, the issue of Teacher Absenteeism appears more for superficial reasons.

In Uttarakhand, it’s seen that teachers in remote postings; choose not to live there; and thus travel kilometers to reach their school. The commute cuts on the valuable time, they would be spending on teaching. They reach school late and leave from school early.

In many schools, where teacher to student ratio, is skewed in favor of teachers (that is more teachers and less students) or is not much marked; many teachers remain absent, for lack of work. In such schools, teachers are seen to be going to the school in turns; and filling the entry book for others, who are absent.

This is also happening, as a section of teachers are taking teaching jobs at schools for salaries, rather than for their love for teaching. Such teachers keep preparing for other competitive exams and are often seen as neglecting their teaching work.

What needs to be done?


If the Uttarakhand Government or any other state Government , wants to improve on the human reasons involved in the implementation of RTE, then it should do the following things, among the usual things:

1) Set up a Time based biometric (finger impression) Teacher attendance register al all schools.

2) Make a strict watch on the jobs, school teachers can apply for (Basic Pay Scale criterion used at present is a good metric)

3) While interviewing a candidate for a teacher job; get a psychological and hand writing profiling done, so as to ascertain whether the candidate actually loves teaching or is taking the job just for the salary.

A Request to You, the aware and responsible citizen of India:

Don't take a teaching job; if you don't like teaching. This is the ethical thing to do.

If you are a parent, a youth or a responsible citizen of India; then report to right authorities, those teachers who don't take their jobs seriously.
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