The New Education Policy 2016 lays strong emphasis on teachers, referring to them as the fulcrum around which school education revolves. McKinsey, the consultancy, captures this sentiment by writing that the “quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers”. Yet teachers are often an afterthought in education policy. Emphasizing how important reform in the role of teachers is, the Subramanian committee report advocates merit based selection and development of teachers, giving the profession a much needed brand of legitimacy and prestige.
Teachers, like all professionals, prefer to have both authority and responsibility for their work, be recognized and rewarded when they do a good job, and have the opportunity to improve when they receive constructive feedback on their performance both inside and outside the classroom.
The Subramanian committee implicitly recognizes the importance of professionalising teaching, but with a disproportionate focus on teacher accountability as a tool for improving teacher performance, excluding key stakeholders such as parents, schools and teachers themselves from the process. The report goes a step further to recommends that the government “integrate student outcomes and relate them to teacher performance - this should be the predominant criterion for making teachers accountable for their performance” (pp 70).
What does effective governance of teachers look like? What should be the role of the government, school administration, teachers and parents in the governance process? Constructive policies on these questions are not easy to generate or implement, especially in an environment where political interference is rife, public funds are scarce, teacher unions are strong and parents are unempowered. Yet extensive academic research on the role of teachers yields some useful guidelines.
Students rarely learn when teachers don’t show up. A survey of schools in rural India estimated that 24% of teachers were absent from the classroom on any given day, with absenteeism as high as 42 per cent in states such as Jharkhand. Battling this absenteeism through routine administrative steps isn’t easy. Attendance monitoring using simple technologies might offer a solution. In one study, teachers were given cameras to take a picture of themselves with students every day at the school opening and closing time. (The cameras stamped the date and time on photographs). A teacher received the regular salary if she was present at least 21 days in a month, along with bonuses with extra attendance and penalties for lower attendance. The scheme resulted in an immediate improvement in teacher attendance, which persisted during the entire year. The absence rate of teachers was just 18% in the camera schools compared to 36% in schools where the scheme was not offered. A more modern version of this scheme might use CCTV cameras or even biometrics to record attendance, an initiative the Delhi Government is also actively thinking about.
Teachers rarely get informed feedback on the quality of their instruction, so they stick to a lesson plan irrespective of whether students are learning or not. And given large variation in students’ academic and social backgrounds, it’s no wonder that what is taught is mismatched with what students need. With teacher capacity being constant, one way to solve this problem is to offer teachers systematic diagnostic feedback. A study in Andhra Pradesh that conducted frequent student tests and reported the results to teachers found that teachers put in more effort as a result of this feedback, but this did not improve eventual student learning. The scope of receiving crucial feedback could also be expanded to include students, peers, school leaders as well as parents, with each stakeholder providing feedback for specific teacher competencies.
Involving parents in the process of teaching might be more promising, especially since parents are keenly interested in the progress of their children, have the highest stake in their child’s success, and are likely to speak up when students struggle in school. Yet, the barriers to parent involvement are high.
A study conducted in Uttar Pradesh reported that only 28 per cent parents visited schools to complain or monitor. Frequent parent-teacher meetings and active parent involvement in school management committees might be a straightforward and low cost way to give teachers and the school feedback on where the learning gaps are.
Anecdotal evidence supports this approach. The Delhi government recently invited parents to its schools and parents were positively surprised about participating in school activities. “For the first time I felt that my children are also studying in a big private school”, a parent commented after attending the meeting in West Delhi.
One policy that is likely to fail is linking teacher performance explicitly to student test scores. This approach of “high-stakes testing” has been tried in the United States to disastrous results. When school funding was tied to student tests under the No Child Left Behind Act, teachers immediately started to focus on the students in the middle of the class, i.e. those they could help pass the exam, rather than the weakest students who were not going to pass anyway.
In a study conducted in Kenya where public school teachers were compensated on the basis of student exam performance, teachers immediately started to hold test-prep sessions, teaching to the test and ignoring all other aspects of their jobs. In the worst cases, public school teachers in Atlanta and Chicago changed exam answer scripts because their own salaries were a function of student performance.
Teachers are critical for our children’s future. Efforts need to be made to make teachers feel supported in their roles enabling them to perform to the best of their abilities. Better and more thoughtful policies will help revitalizing and professionalizing their work.
Avantika Dhingra
is a Senior Program Manager at Central Square Foundation managing grants and research for CSF’s Human Capital Development work
Tarun Jain
is an Assistant Professor, Economics and Public Policy at the Indian School of Business
Email: tarun_jain@isb.edu