RTE may suffer from teachers' shortage

Updated on: Friday, June 04, 2010

New Delhi: The Right to Education Act (RTE) might come a cropper for acute shortage of teachers, especially lack of trained ones.

That's how the Parliamentary Committee on Human Resource Development assesses the situation with regard to implementation of the historic act. 'Teacher recruitment is today the biggest challenge before the Department of School Education,'' it said in its latest report.

There are several states which have not made recruitments as required under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan(SSA) despite sanctions for the posts. However, the number of teachers sanctioned under the programme does not match the requirements as per the RTE.

Some states like Assam, Manipur and Nagaland have not recruited any teachers at all under the SSA, as per the figures available till December, 2009. In Bihar, out of the sanctioned posts of 2,60,841, only 1,60,145 teachers have been recruited.

The RTE lays down a pupil-teacher ratio(PTR) of 30:1 as compared to SSA norm of 40:1 and 35:1 for the upper primary stage. Not only this, RTE also mandates that the prescribed PTR has to be maintained in respect of each school rather than on average for the block, district or the state.

''Status of teachers under SSA depicts glaring shortfalls especially in very crucial states, and with RTE coming into force, this challenge has assumed almost impossible level of achievement, especially with regard to quality,'' the report said.

It said it was sad to note that ''teacher training has remained on the margins of the Indian academia and training of primary and upper primary school teachers outside its domain.'' The Committee recommended that besides taking the teacher recruitment in a mission mode, special attention should be paid to teacher training both at induction and in-house levels.

The committee noted that uptill now focus had been primarily on the quantitative expansion of the SSA, and the qualitative aspect had given some attention only now.

With the RTE coming into force, 5.1 lakh additional teachers will have to be recruited and given induction training. Besides 7-6 lakh untrained teachers will have to be trained along with 34 lakh teachers who will be given in-service teacher training.

The committee advised the department to chalk out an Action Plan for teacher recruitment and training in consultation with states and implement the same in a mission mode.

It also expressed concern over the large number of para- teachers (contractual teachers) in some states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh where the number of such teachers was higher than regular teachers.

Moreover, qualification norms for the recruitment of teachers prescribed by the NCTE were followed only in very few states, it said.

RTE may suffer from teachers' shortage

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