TEACHING REALITIES
4.2L primary schools have just
one teacher
 Bangalore:
Even as Right to Education Bill holds out the promise of education
for all children, there’s a huge stumbling block. Altogether 4.17
lakh primary schools in India have one or at best two teachers.
And that’s 54% of all primary schools in the country.
Worse, the number of primary schools with three or less number
of teachers is as high as 5.49 lakh — that’s a staggering 71.5%.
The report of the working group on elementary education and
literacy for the 11th Five-Year Plan submitted to HRD ministry has
said that schools across the country are woefully short of
teachers.
Though there has been an impressive increase in the number of
primary and upper primary school teachers in India in the past two
decades, the imbalance in teacher allocation between states,
districts and within districts, between rural and urban areas
continues to be a major concern, sources said.
The increase in upper primary teachers is relatively higher in
rural areas of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh,
Karnataka, MP and Rajasthan. In most states, the percentage
increase in upper primary teachers is more than that of primary
teachers. Also, irrational allocation of primary teachers among
schools and between rural and urban areas is a major issue in many
states. Yet another major issue is small schools with very few
teachers.
The working group has also pointed out that teacher training
programmes have continued to be oriented towards monograde
teaching situations. Teaching-learning materials used in these
small schools are also not geared to teaching in multi-age and
multi-grade settings. The need of the hour is to ensure teachers
working in these schools receive proper orientation on teaching in
such contexts and conditions. There is a need to take a fresh hard
look at our training programme, including content, duration,
method and frequency too.
4.2 lakh institutes which have just one teacher constitute
54% of all primary schools in India
The number of primary schools with three or less number of
teachers is as high as 5.5 lakh—that is a staggering 71.5%
The report of the working group on elementary education
submitted to the HRD ministry says teacher training programmes are
not geared to teaching in multi-grade settings
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