Address the shortage of secondary school teachers urgently
The impact of the persistent shortage of teachers at government secondary schools will be monumental unless it is addressed immediately. We wrote about the issue not long ago, and a recent report by this daily shows that the problem still persists, with no concrete solution in sight. It is mind-boggling how 2,842 teaching posts remain vacant in government secondary schools and 77,227 posts in non-government secondary schools under the Monthly Pay Order (MPO) programme. As a result, students are not learning enough while existing teachers are overworked. Consequently, the overall quality of education is deteriorating at a stage as crucial as secondary school. This will likely impact the academic and professional future of these young people adversely.
The data is truly shocking. Out of the 20,631 secondary schools, as many as 3,861 do not have ICT teachers, 2,744 have no mathematics teachers, and 2,625 are without English teachers. The lack of trained teachers in key subjects has been a persistent problem, leading to poor learning outcomes, an increase in dropout rates, and a rise in the number of students failing.
Delays in recruitment, problems in teacher deployment and difficulty in retaining teachers are the main factors behind the shortage. These are festering problems that have been allowed to accumulate. Unfortunately, successive governments have paid little heed to expert suggestions in addressing the crisis, resulting in predictable consequences.
During the interim government’s tenure, a 10-member Improvement of Secondary Education Committee was formed, which provided 120 recommendations. It included a long-term proposal to make major changes in the recruitment and deployment process of secondary school teachers. It recommended, for instance, establishing a National Teaching Corps under which graduates would be recruited into the teaching service with competitive salaries, allowances, and professional status. In addition, they would have to serve for at least five years in government-assigned institutions, especially in schools in rural areas where acute teacher shortage is often a chronic issue.
Learning from other countries, especially within the region, to see how teachers are trained, paid, and incentivised to stay in the schools for which they were originally recruited, would be the right step. The present government has increased the education budget from 1.39 percent of the GDP to 2 percent, but it is still less than the four to six percent as recommended by Unesco. We urge the government to fully endorse the recommendations of the committee and implement them as soon as possible. Thousands of secondary students have already had to bear the brunt of a flawed education system and paid the price in terms of low-paying jobs and unemployment. Teachers help in building the intellectual backbone of a country. Yet teachers are some of the lowest-paid professionals. This must stop. Teachers must be given their due both financially and in terms of their status. Only then can we hope to get an adequate number of qualified teachers in all schools.
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