- Teachers must only teach:
- Employ young people, equip them with a tablet computer and let them be cluster administrators. One cluster of schools consists of around ten schools.
- The cluster administrators will overtake the administrative tasks and ensure that teachers and headmasters can focus on academic work.
- Better policies like transparent transfer mechanisms, which urgently need upscaling and strengthening. After adequate teacher positioning, school autonomy and teacher collaborations have demonstrated in many pilots to be the catalyst that transforms the education system.
- Teacher’s own collectives or networks built collaborations and institutional capacities of teachers.
- Digitization:
- Create a single-window system for infrastructure and mainstream fund-flows: In Bihar, only around 10 percent of the schools fulfils infrastructure norms. A study revealed that files for renovating schools often go on a two-year journey through various departments.
- The same can be applied for teacher salaries and school funds. These can be transferred directly from the State to the teachers and schools. There is no need to involve the District or Block in this process.
- Leveraging the audio-visual edutainment to make education more interesting and easier to understand for the children. This will improve the quality as well as reduce the drop-out rates.
- Implementing bio-metric attendance for teachers and students for every class can help reduce absenteeism.
- Empower School Management Committees by using mobile phones:
- To develop a system that facilitates School Management Committee members by fostering democratic accountability.
- Social audits should also be carried out for effective functioning.
- The Government must insist on fixing teachers’ accountability in public schools and learning outcome-based recognition for all schools, be it public or private schools.
- Better pre-service teacher training coupled with transparent and merit-based recruitments is a lasting solution for teacher quality.
- Improve the quality of teacher education by making teacher training mandatory. Example: National Council for Teacher Education Act amendment bill, Diksha portal to train teachers.
- Increase the public spending on education to 6% of GDP as recommended by many committees like the recent TSR Subramaniam committee.
- Teachers are rarely reprimanded for non-performance, while there are recommendations for removal of non-detention policy. The blame is squarely on the children, such an attitude must be wiped out.
- Teachers’ efficiency will improve with administrative incentives, better pay and a systematic change in the professional development of this cohort.
- Education policy in India is focused on inputs rather than learning outcomes; It has a strong elitist bias in favour of higher education as opposed to primary or secondary education. This needs a change by coming out with a new policy.
To usher in demographic dividend, it is necessary to allocate sufficient funds for school education as well as efficient utilization of it. A public school system that guarantees universal access, good learning and all facilities has to be among the highest national priorities.
