It is unfortunate that the teaching profession in India is no longer considered an attractive career option by young, bright people. This article outlines a plan to make teaching a more viable profession in India. It recommends strengthening teacher education institutions, incorporating practical experience into teacher preparation programmes, promoting performance-linked rewards and career progression, and creating a more professional environment for teachers.
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India has had a time-honoured tradition of holding teachers in great regard. Sadly, in the past few decades, the teacher’s status has degenerated from being a revered member of the community to being a disempowered government functionary who is relegated to the bottom of the administrative hierarchy. It is no longer aspirational to choose a career in teaching. We need to ask ourselves why the brightest of our young people view teaching as a last-resort career option.
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India currently faces a shortage of over 12 lakh (1.2 million) teachers, according to estimates by the Ministry of Human Resource Development1. Many states have been working their way around this by hiring under-qualified contract teaching staff.
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Poor teacher quality is a catch-22 situation in India – it is not possible to recruit high quality talent without restoring dignity to the profession, and it is not possible to restore dignity without making teaching a viable career option.
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A systemic problem
Though it has become customary to blame teachers for poor learning levels in schools in India, it is also important to remember that the problem has a deeper root. It is a systemic problem that is associated with each stage of the the entire life-cycle of what it means to be a teacher in India. This cycle can be broken down into several stages: an individual’s decision to choose teaching as a profession; pre-service teacher training period; recruitment and induction; actual service period, including ongoing in-service training; and finally, career progression opportunities.
Those who study to be teachers get inadequate preparation for it in the B.Ed. and D.Ed. courses. We begin by setting a low bar for entrance to these institutions. To appear for the B.Ed. entrance exam, candidates need to have only 50% marks in their university degree. During their course, there is very limited practical exposure for aspiring teachers to practice their craft. As a result, pass rates in the Teacher Eligibility Test, which is now a requirement for applying to teaching positions in government schools after the B.Ed./ D.Ed. courses, have fluctuated in the worrying range of less than 1% to about 11%. In contrast, Finland, South Korea and Singapore recruit teachers from the top third of the graduating class in high school. These countries use a combined strategy encompassing compensation, prestige, and the needs of the labour market at the national level to attract high-quality talent for teaching.
India does not have a structured process of inducting newly qualified teachers. They receive next to no mentorship in their initial years of the profession. Regular teachers have minimal access to a professional network where they could discuss their challenges and learning with their peers. Most harrowingly, our teachers have very few opportunities towards career progression. A regular teacher may be promoted to the position of the school principal only on the basis of seniority, rather than performance.
However, contrary to popular perception, teaching in India is now a relatively well-paying profession. Prior to the 6th Pay Commission, the ratio of average teacher salaries to the national per capita income was 3:1 (2006). This ratio is now 5:1. In contrast, this ratio stands between 1 and 2 in OECD2 countries, and closer home, it is 1 in Bangladesh and 2 in Pakistan.
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Restoring dignity to the teaching profession in India
What, then, can we do to restore dignity to the profession and make it a career choice worth aspiring for? Here are some options worth considering.
– Campaign to give teaching its due place…
– Restructuring teacher education institute capacity…
– Practice-oriented teacher preparation programmes…
– Restructuring teacher education institute capacity…
– Practice-oriented teacher preparation programmes…
– Opening lateral entry into the profession of teaching…
– Promoting rewards, recognition and career progression…
– Promoting rewards, recognition and career progression…
It is worth recalling the words of Lee Iacocca, the legendary former CEO of Chrysler,an American automobile company, who had said, “In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilisation along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honour and the highest responsibility anyone could have.”
How far are we then in our quest towards such a “rational society”?
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