BHUBANESWAR: The state government’s focus on reforming school education, notwithstanding, teacher distribution in government schools continues to be uneven. While primary and upper primary grades in government schools of the state have more teachers than required, the secondary and higher secondary grades are struggling with vacancies.
As per the data of the Ministry of Education, a teacher of a higher secondary class in a government school here has to handle 40 or more students whereas the student-teacher ratio should be one teacher for 27 students.
As per the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, the Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) norms for primary and upper primary level (all managements) are 30:1 and 35:1 respectively. The PTR at the national level for government primary schools is 28:1, for upper primary schools is 24:1, for elementary schools, is 26:1, for secondary schools is 19:1 and for higher secondary schools is 27:1 as per UDISE 2021-22.
Replying to a query on PTR in the Lok Sabha this month, Minister of State for Education Annapurna Devi informed that the pupil-teacher ratio in Odisha (government schools) for primary, upper primary is 19:1 each and that for secondary is 23:1. Whereas, for higher secondary grades it is 42:1.
Odisha’s overall pupil-teacher ratio stands at 23 against the national average of 28, as per the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2021-22 report. There are 49,072 government schools in Odisha. While there are 27,145 primary schools, the number of schools offering secondary education (Class 6 to 10) is 1,166 while 290 schools offer Class 11 and 12.
The state has 63 government schools that provide education from Class 1 to 12. According to the UDISE+ report, there are 2.11 lakh teachers in government schools and the majority 63,896 of them are teaching in primary schools followed by 11,840 in secondary schools. For Class 11 and 12, the number narrows down to only 1,151 teachers.
Educationists said delays in teacher appointments, particularly at the higher secondary level, have resulted in the skewed PTR. Earlier this year in August, the state government announced the recruitment of 20,000 junior teachers (schematic) for primary and upper primary schools. Applicants for the posts had appeared in the computer-based examinations in November. They added that primary teacher recruitment is taking place after a gap of seven years.
“Besides, a Bachelor in Education degree is required for a student to qualify for a teacher post in higher secondary school. With the state government squeezing BEd seats across all teacher training colleges, it is not producing the number of teachers it requires for the higher grades,” said a former teacher Geetanjali Rath.
She suggested that the government should change its focus from infrastructure in schools to human resources in them. Meanwhile, the School and Mass Education department informed preliminary process has started to recruit 1,008 post-graduate trained teachers in higher secondary schools. Recruitments will be made by OPSC for 23 subjects.