The Salgaon government school had no regular English teacher, said headmaster Ashok Kumar, which illustrates another fact: India is short of 556,000 primary school teachers. Of the teachers available, many stay absent or are assigned non-teaching jobs. Almost 24 per cent teachers were absent during random visits to rural schools, found this 2015 study by the University of California, IndiaSpend reported in September 2016.
“We are assigned all sorts of duties, from making election voter lists to counting livestock,” said Dalpat Singh Rathore, a school teacher. Last year, Himachal Pradesh piloted Pratham’s intensive-learning programme in Hamirpur district. Encouraging early results, including 14 per cent improvement in students who could read a text with two or fewer mistakes and 12 per cent improvement in division skills — simple division was considered a problem area for class 5 students despite being taught in class 3 — led the state government to own the concept, albeit with some customisation.
“We have increased the length of the learning programme to 45 days and start the day with a two-hour learning session before switching to the regular curriculum,” said Ghanshyam Chand, state project director for Himachal Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (National Middle-School Education Programme). “We have also expanded the scope of the initiative to include assessment of students, to remove any teacher bias from the process and to encourage regular grading,” he said.
“With the Programme for Result Enhancement, Resource Nurturing and Assessment, as the expanded state government programme has been called, for which Pratham is a technical advisor, we expect to put a stop to primary students being promoted to the next level without imbibing basic language and math skills,” said Chand.
(Sourced from agencies, feature image courtesy:seedsofempowerment.org)
