Learning without teachers

"The destiny of India is being shaped in her classrooms." When the Kothari Commission report began with this truism, it could scarcely have imagined that, even after six decades, India's ever-expanding classroom population would be compelled to write its destiny largely without guidance, or with only negligible support, because of the absence of teachers who were expected to mentor pupils in shaping both their own futures and that of the nation.

- NAVNEET SHARMA

A recent press release by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) proudly proclaimed that India has one crore teachers to educate twenty-four crore school-going children. On the surface, this would appear to reflect the attainment of the ideal pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) of 1:24 required for the delivery of quality education. Yet, a closer interrogation of the data reveals a starkly different, and far more troubling, reality.

The ten most populous states of India, which are Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh, collectively home to more than seventy percent of the country's population, present a contrasting narrative.

Data from Uttar Pradesh's Basic Education Department illustrates this paradox. The state manages 1,32,855 schools with 6,03,441 teachers, averaging 4.5 teachers per school. However, official records also indicate that 8,866 of these schools function with only one teacher, accommodating a total enrolment of 6,11,950 students, which translates into a staggering PTR of 1:69.

In practice, this means that in schools with five grades (I-V), a single teacher is expected not only to simultaneously teach all classes but also to oversee the PM-POSHAN (mid-day meal scheme) and engage in administrative and managerial tasks. By comparison, private school data from the same state reflects 4,14,144 teachers employed across 74,471 schools, underscoring the significant disparities in access to quality education between government and private institutions.