Of six million teaching positions in government schools nationwide, about 900,000 elementary school teaching positions and 100,000 in secondary school—put together, a million—are vacant, as reported in December 2016, according to an answer given in the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament). Of these, at least 200,000 vacancies are in Bihar’s government elementary schools.
As the first part of this series observed, literacy rates and learning outcomes are some of the lowest in the BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states. By 2020, India will have the world’s largest working population–869 million–but an analysis of these four states–with 43.6% of India’s school-age population between the age of five and 14– revealed that India is unprepared to educate and train its young population.
