On Teachers' absenteeism in schools

Following is a practical problem put up for a public discourse by the Collector of a backward district in the state of Uttar Pradesh. This problem is regarding a very major issue within the education system at primary level in most of the government schools in Northern India, especially in rural areas. Apart from lack of proper infrastructure, low student enrollment ratio, huge turnover and absenteeism, the most important prerequisite for learning is lack of good teachers in these schools. Even if teachers are there, in abysmally low numbers, they often do not attend schools except on the pay-day, and are unable to impart any real education to the students. The questions invite implementable solutions at the district level administration:

1. How to ensure that teachers come to school?
2. How to ensure that the teacher actually teaches students and learning happens?

Although it is not hard to list down the major reasons for these problems, which include lack of proper qualification, insufficient checks, lack of proper incentives, career progression issues, indifferent parents, government’s apathy, casual culture etc., it is important to address the issue in a multi-pronged manner with both short term and long term solutions.

• To ensure attendance, install fingerprint based biometric attendance devices in all schools. These devices come at an affordable cost, are easy to maintain, and the feedback can be easily stored in a database that can be checked on a periodic basis. There should be fingerprint attendance at the start and end of every period (or on an hourly basis). This is a coercive method however and will not ensure dedication on part of teachers while in classroom.
• A corruption proof monitoring team to make periodic surprise visits in schools, to see if the classes are being taken as schedule. This however will require a lot of dedicated personnel.
• A working Parents Teachers Association should be set up at various regional levels, with defined reporting roles of officials like school principals.
• The practice of home-coaching by school teachers should be immediately checked as it incentivizes teachers not to attend or teach at school properly, by earning easy tuition money. PTA and feedback from students can be a good way to get reliable information on such practices, as those parents and students who can’t afford private tuitions will be more than ready to divulge the details of such teachers. This is a very serious problem even in urban public schools.
• Collaborations with NGOs can be done to interact with teachers and understand and address their problems, sensitize them about the importance of their role in nation building, and motivate and train them timely. There is need to bring an attitudinal change in teachers. Issues sexual harrasment, transport facilities, toilets.
• Introducing teachers to better teaching techniques, use of IT, videos, graphics charts etc. will instill a new spirit in them. However lack of infrastructure can remain an impediment.
• There is also a need to devolve some important functions like feedback etc. to PRIs and Urban local bodies. It is not only easier to maintain an interface with these legitimate and responsible institutions, but also a good way to improve relations between Local government and District Administration.
• A number of govt. school teachers are for a significant number of days in a year made to serve for jobs like examination invigilation, surveys, census, elections and other non-teaching jobs. This has serious and adverse effect on their performance as teachers. If possible this should be reduced.
• The results of schools, in Board examinations at primary, secondary etc. levels can be used as standard parameters to monitor changing standards of teaching in schools. Using this data it will be easier to identify the areas or schools where the above mentioned systems are not functioning well. It may be argued that the performance depends on students’ dedication also. But I believe that differentials introduced in the performance will be proportional to success of the above methods.