no teacher shortage

The lack of teachers in public schools can be fixed by using the resources that are already available more wisely. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many public schools have been closed, which has hurt the education of many children. It is thought that 82 percent of primary school students have lost basic maths skills and 92 percent have lost basic language skills. 

Getting out of the PTR bind

Most people agree that schools need to have a healthy PTR for students to get a good education. The RTE Act of 2009 says that all public, private, and government-funded schools must have a PTR of no more than 30 students per teacher in the elementary grades and 35 students per teacher in the upper primary grades. It also tells the teacher how to assign the work. 

Understanding why there aren’t enough teachers for everyone

Why do a lot of states have a lot of PTR schools even though they have more teachers than they need to meet RTE standards? There are two parts to the answer. First of all, RTE rules say that small schools with 60 students or less must have at least two teachers. These schools make up almost half of all government schools. So, even if there are less than 60 kids in a school, it still has two teachers. Because teachers aren’t being used to their full potential, one in four schools in India have less than 30 students and only two teachers.

Solutions for the long and short term

One way to fix the uneven distribution of teachers is to move teachers from schools with high PTR to schools with low PTR. But this system can’t be used in places where there are more teaching jobs open than there are teachers to fill them. States like West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh need teachers much more than can be met by just moving resources around.

Make an open system.

Transferring surplus teachers, which is also called “teacher rationalisation,” is an important first step in making sure that government schools with low PTR have enough teachers. The Ministry of Education has told all states to speed up the process of reorganising teachers. The National Education Policy 2020 also gives open online tools for teacher transfers a lot of attention.

Move the teachers around.

As an alternative to transferring teachers, you could offer them incentives to take temporary jobs at PTR schools that have problems until the spots there can be filled with new teachers. The RTE Act’s restrictions on how teachers are assigned could be eased to make this process go more smoothly. If the rule is changed so that only one teacher is sent to schools with 20 or fewer students and two teachers are sent to schools with 21 to 60 students, there will be a lot more room for extra teachers.

Find some new teachers.

Last but not least, new teachers must be hired quickly for open positions, especially in big states with a lot of openings. There have been some good changes in this area. The Patna High Court in Bihar lifted the ban on hiring 1.25 lakh teachers for public schools in June 2021.