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Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2009
One of the key reasons for the low achievement of the students is irregularity of teachers and their poor accountability. The teachers have been supported under Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) as never before. However, the 11th Plan’s concern that “teacher attendance, ability and motivation appears to be the weakest link of elementary education programme” remains true. This needs to be addressed urgently as the entire edifice of quality centres around teachers and classroom learning methods. National aggregate of teachers’ absenteeism can’t be much weak, but in some non performing States, it is 30-40%. The tribal Block Velhe in Pune District, where I come from, out of 144 postings, about 70 are vacant. However, Pune district on the whole has good attendance, but Velhe is a different story, it is a seirous cause of concern and we need to address it. Besides this the Bill does not address remedial teaching.
Under SSA a large number of teachers have been appointed by Panchayats and local school Committees. Very often these teachers are local youths who belong to the village and have a good rapport with the community. Reports indicate that they are regular in their attendance and have been able to bring to schools children who have hitherto remained outside the school systems. DISE data indicates that the qualification of these para teachers is quite comparable to that of regular teachers. If the teachers are appointed locally they are under supervision of the local community and perform better as they have been appointed by them. In the Bill on Right to Education decentralized measures like school based appointments of teachers need to be introduced to bring about accountability among teachers. In Maharashtra, teachers are employees of Zilla Parishads or Municipal authorities. Their postings remain a major hurdle in rationalisation of postings. The SSA’s Project Board has urged the State Government repeatedly to rationalise teacher’s postings as per the requirement specially of the schools in remote areas with little success. The entire system encourages the teachers to bring political pressure in getting posted to schools in bigger towns, and villages located on the ST routes. This results in schools in remote areas having either no teachers for long periods or teachers posted on paper but not attending. The rampant practice of proxy teachers both in rural and urban areas thus affects quality education and the students only suffer. The local community has no ownership of the activities at the school as the teachers seldom are from amongst them and are not accountable to them. The control on the teachers is distant in the form of education inspector who can not keep a watch on what happens in all the schools on day to day basis under his jurisdiction for obvious reasons. This need to be reviewed as once the Bill is passed the country will loose an opportunity to bring accountability among teachers through this important legislation.
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