Even as the Teacher’s Day is observed on Saturday, nearly 25% elementary schools in the State struggle to meet the teacher norms mandated under the Right to Education (RTE) Act as per the Niti Aayog’s School Education Quality Index (SEQI) report.
When the focus should be on filling up the posts of teachers, which is crucial to impart quality education in the classroom, the State Government has decided to close 6,340 schools in the State.
The schools will be permanently closed where the strengths of children are less than 20, a notification issued in March by the School and Mass Education Department over implementation guidelines for the policy of rationalisation and consolidation of schools has revealed.
Correspondingly, over 21,000 teacher positions in the Government-run schools at primary level are lying vacant, as per the report of the department, which is a causative factor for increased dropout or out-of-school rate among children, especially in rural Odisha.
This has indirectly contributed towards a sharp rise in number of students opting for private schools. As per a State Government report, there were 5,088 private schools in 2014-15 in the State but it increased to 6,547 in 2017-18. This 17% rise indicates there is an avenue for them.
A survey by the Unified District Information System of Education (UDISE) 2018 has found that less than 13 per cent of schools across India are compliant with the RTE Act. But a report of National RTE Forum claims that only 6.6 per cent schools of Odisha are complying RTE norms which is even less than the national average.
In July, the Odisha Shramajeebee Mancha (OSM) and the Mahila Shramajeebee Mancha, Odisha (MSMO) undertook a survey of 2,851 children of Classes-III, V and VIII to assess the learning outcome of the children who study in Government schools in 17 districts.
The survey reports that out of 845 students of Class-VIII, 48% were below the required standard in English subject. Similarly in mathematics, it was 45% among children. The learning level of Classes-III and V is also worrisome in the same way. Out of 1,088 students in Class-V, 59% could not meet the expected class appropriate learning level in English, 53% in Mathematics and 31% in Odia language.
One of the reasons that attributed to a low level of learning among the children was the lack of required teachers in schools or the teacher absenteeism. The Niti Aayog’s School Education Quality Index (SEQI) report further revealed that Odisha scores an abysmal 30% in the learning outcome domain indicator.
“This shows how the role of teachers is key to imparting quality education. Instead of implementing the rationalisation policy where teachers from the closed schools will be shifted to the merged ones, to fill the pupils-teacher ratio gap, the Government should increase its education budget and focus on recruiting teachers as soon as possible to ensure provisioning of quality education,” said OSM convener Anjan Pradhan.