Look who's teaching your child!

Updated on: Thursday, June 23, 2011

If you were drawn to glossy brochures, well-dressed teachers, air-conditioned classrooms with CCTV cameras and banners showing children practicing yoga before choosing a school for your child, here is some bitter news .

Ahmedabad has 711 private primary schools, but only one of them has all teachers with basic BEd and PTC degrees, which are mandatory for getting the job. Here is another startling fact. As many as 3,294 teachers in these schools are HSC , SSC or diplomaholders in every subject except teaching. In fact , there are 18 schools in the city where all 123 teachers are HSC and SSC pass-outs and teach 4,556 children. Only 2,577 teachers hold BEd and MEd degrees.
It took an RTI application from an Ahmedabad based teacher Vinod Pandya in 2008 for the Ahmedabad district education officer (DEO) to collect information on unqualified teachers from various private schools in the city.

"The numbers clearly show that education is being reduced to a business in the city. Before I filed the RTI application, the education department had not bothered to conduct routine inspections despite a provision in the Bombay Primary Education rules, 1949. Primary education lays the foundation of higher learning. If unqualified teachers teach our children, one can imagine their future," says Pandya.

What, then, stops DEOs across the state from collecting the same information in other districts of Gujarat ? Despite being armed with this data, the Ahmedabad education department has failed to take any action against city schools that have employed such unqualified teachers .

Times of India

Look who's teaching your child!

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