Editorial
Teacher crisis in primary education
Emphasis should be on training and placement
THAT education at the primary level is beset with a problem of teacher shortage, more precisely, a dearth of trained hands, is far too known a fact to perhaps need a recital. Even though different governments had to address the issue hitting the road, they invariably ended up taking a quantitative view: adding to numbers rather than insisting on the quality of intake. Resultantly, teaching quality in the preparatory phase of education, considered so vital to the higher stages of learning suffered. Let's face it, this was largely due to a lack of professionally set criteria for recruitment, or owing to a bending of standards due to political pressure, exerted locally or otherwise.
Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid said on Tuesday that the government would appoint 25,000 primary school teachers in the near future in addition to the 20,000 it has already recruited. It must be pointed out that primary school teachers are appointed locally. However, the government needs to set such recruitment procedures as would ensure quality of intake. The qualifications for entry as primary school teachers are: SSC, HSC and/or certificate in education diploma. In other words, most of the entrants are basically fresh.
Those who have had a teaching stint in primary schools know how adept one must be in the art and science of child psychology to make the children receptive and responsive to classroom instructions. Our hope and expectation, therefore, are that the concerned educational authorities have arranged for orientation and pre-training sessions running into a few months rather than some weeks for the fresh recruits so that they can take up their assignments on a reasonably confident footing. Then, there should be periodic engagements in in-service training with some modern inputs so as to enable them to perfect their skills. Emphasis ought to be laid on elementary English and Mathematics, knowing fully well that a severe shortage of teachers trained in these subjects exists.
We can think of two best practice options, drawing on an expert opinion, by way of adopting an effective recruitment policy. First is the appoint-train-place mode and the second is recruit-train-appoint formula. Whichever route we take it's teachers' training that is pivotal to providing efficient schooling at the primary level.
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