Teacher in the Indian Education Management Set-up
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There has been a growing realisation that a system-wide transformation is crucial for the attainment and sustainability of the goal of UEE and MDG with improved quality. The role of education in improving the choice and quality of lives, enhancing social and economic productivity, and initiating the process of empowerment and redistribution of resources is well-documented in the past fifty eight years of research.
The objectives of improved access and increased participation, reduced drop-out rates and enhanced learning achievements cannot be met and sustained without improving the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of teacher in the elementary education system. While decentralization and community empowerment as rhetoric continue to consider the role of the teacher in school management as critical, the ground reality is altogether different. The place of the government primary school teacher is invariably at the lowest rung in the official hierarchy, and commands practically no authority even within the school. The teacher is directly responsible for the learning achievement of the student; he or she may never assess the learning achievement of the student. In many states, a specified proportion of teachers are recruited directly as ‘para teachers’, though a majority of the appointees would be from the local area. The directly recruited teachers, who would have a greater opportunity to enhance the learning of the child, are engaged in a different activity rather than teaching. Adding to the problem of present education crisis the demand supply problem is another important concern in the education sector. My experience in the education sector says that still around 50% of the school doesn’t follow the prescribe student-teacher ratio. An important reason sited by the teacher and principle is non availability of teachers in the school. The apathy of the government in terms of teacher recruitment and desire of parents to provide quality education to the children poses many questions in front of education planner and practicener. Another important question for the education community is about the curriculum design at the primary. At present teacher have lesser autonomy in terms of talking the decision about what to teach in the classroom. But the expectation from the teacher is quite high in terms of deliver of result. At the present juncture should we opt for a system which envisages teachers with specialized background to handle different curriculum areas like arts, physical education, science, mathematics etc? Or we may restrict to subject specific teacher. How far it is possible for a single teacher to handle all primary curriculums with same competence and ensure quality teaching. This all question needs reinvestigation to ensure quality education to our future generation. In my opinion an emerging factor that is likely to change social perceptions about the place of teachers in a significant manner is the move to implement right to information and effective Management Information System (MIS). This in effect may make the teacher more accountable and improve their status within the system. Instead, apprehensions were expressed in some quarters that knowledge revolution and technology change make the teacher job more challenging. The local Village Education Committees and local self-governing bodies started giving importance to attending to school management issues. Also there is lack of clarity on the relative position of new posts created in the system, such as cluster co-ordinators vis-à-vis primary school heads. |
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