Belated Teacher Training Revolution in K-12 Education
In all lamentations about the pathetic quality of public education, the elephant in the room which politically correct commentators choose to ignore is the country’s 9 million-strong teachers community and its role in plunging teaching-learning standards to the nadir – Dilip Thakore The establishment — which also includes captains of Indian industry who incur arguably the highest personnel training costs worldwide and endure rock-bottom labour productivity — is in denial. But there’s a mountain of evidence which testifies that India’s education system from kindergarten to Ph D is slowly sliding towards a deep abyss. The body of evidence is as disturbing as it is overwhelming. In early childhood care and education (ECCE), the National Early Childhood Care and Education policy draft approved by the Union cabinet of the Congress-led UPA-II government during its last few days in office, has disappeared into the bureaucratic maze under the rule of the incumbent BJP-led NDA government, which was voted to power at the Centre with an overwhelming majority by an exasperated electorate in General Election 2014. Consequently, only 84 million of the country’s 164 million children under age five are covered by the Central government’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme which runs 1.34 million anganwadis (nutrition centres for newborns and lactating mothers which also provide nominal early childhood education) countrywide. Nor has the Union Budget 2017-18 presented in Parliament on February 1, made any meaningful incremental outlay to enable inclusion of the 80 million infants uncovered by the ICDS programme. In this connection, it’s pertinent to note that according to UNDP’s latest Human Development Report 2016 released on March 21, 38.7 percent of India’s 164 million children under age five suffer severe malnutrition and are in danger of stunting and brain damage. In primary education, the picture is only marginally better. The authoritative and deeply-researched Annual Status of Education Report 2016 of the widely respected Pratham Education Foundation, released in Delhi on January 16, highlights abysmal learning outcomes in primary education in rural India. In 589 rural districts (out of a total 707 nationwide), 52.2 percent of class V children are unable to read and comprehend class II textbooks. Moreover, 62.3 percent of children in class VII are unable to complete simple division sums and 74.5 percent can’t do subtraction sums correctly. Although 98 percent of India’s children between the ages of 6-14 are enrolled in 1.4 million government and private primary schools countrywide, very little learning is happening inside the nation’s classrooms, especially in public primaries run by the country’s 29 state governments. And ominously as reported by Pratham year after year, the percentage of children in higher primary classes unable to retain what they have — or should have — learned is rising rather than reducing, indicating indifferent teaching and reckless promotion of under-prepared children to senior classes. Things are hardly better in secondary education. In 2010 for the first time, a selected batch of secondary students from government and private schools in Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu — among the…
