The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act passed in 2009, ensuring the right of education to all children between the ages of six and fourteen, and affording a free education to the 30 to 35 million children in India not currently in school. However, according to India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development, the country lacks over 1.2 million primary school teachers. The target teacher to student ratio of the RTE Act is 1:30, yet the current country-wide ratio is 1:42. 16.29% of primary schools have only one teacher, and 16.64% of villages lack primary schools altogether, according to UNICEF. As India transforms into a knowledge economy, the demand for higher education is also outranking the supply of schools and teachers- universities are missing approximately one third of their faculties. According to a senior official at the HRD Ministry, quality of education is their main concern; however this issue is now being petitioned before the Supreme Court by private schools believing the Act to be discriminatory to the poor.
In India’s case, the quality and quantity of education are intrinsically linked—as teachers are stretched too thin, the quality of education declines. It is doubtful that the quality can be increased overall without the addition of more teachers. But how can teaching as a career be made more lucrative? The U.S. obviously doesn’t have the answer to this quandary- we have our own problems with our education system: teachers being laid off due to budget cuts and small salaries awarded in relation to the valuable service provided. In order to attract prospective educators, “the ministry has started housing and insurance schemes for over 60,000 teachers,” according to an HRD ministry official. Is a benefits package such as this enough to recruit the amount of teachers necessary for a country (where one-third of its population is illiterate) to achieve universal education?
http://sify.com/news/teacher-shortage-could-hamper-universal-education-goal-for-teacher-s-day-sep-5-news-education-kjemabhjcdg.html
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article619832.ece
Isn't interesting how countries that are different in so many ways seem to overlap on education? Other than villages not having primary schools, this article could be written about many countries. Including the United States, it will be very interesting to see how different countries address the same problem.
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