Ill taught child to unproductive worker

Ill taught child to unproductive worker

Nation’s economy being hurt by poor schools.

Teacher shortage continues to plague India’s school education system. The NITI Aayog’s School Education Quality Index found that a large percentage of schools across states failed to meet the Right to Education’s norms for pupil-teacher ratio — only 50% of upper primary schools in 22 states fulfilled the norms. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) found that India had 14 teachers for every 1,000 under-15 year olds. India clearly needs more teachers, but simply increasing the number of teachers or meeting set norms will not improve learning outcomes and augment the quality of human capital.

The ILO analysis demonstrates this — Finland, which has one of the best school systems, does not even figure among the top 20 on the basis of number of teachers per 1,000 under-15 population. What makes an effective school system is the quality of teachers and their capacity to innovate and tailor curriculum to fit the learning needs of their student body. This holds particularly true for a country like India, where the schoolgoing cohort spans the entire socioeconomic spectrum. Studies have demonstrated that elementary school teachers have critical impact on the earning capacities of students, and, therefore, the nation’s economy. Therefore, India must focus on augmenting both the quantity and quality of its teachers. A robust teacher selection mechanism to attract individuals with the capacity and commitment to teaching is essential. This system should include pathways for identifying students with aptitude and interest in teaching, nurturing them and funding their higher education who, once trained, will return to teach at these schools. Improving learning outcomes will require giving greater autonomy to schools and teachers to design their curriculum.

The national curriculum should be a broad document that gives top line guidelines for the school system but the details of what schools teach, how they teach should be left to schools. This will allow teachers to shape the curriculum to the requirements of their students and ensure positive outcomes for them.