COIMBATORE: Rs 40,299 crore is how much Tamil Nadu allocated for school education in its 2023-24 budget, the highest for any department. A figure like that suggests the state is serious about educating its children. But a visit to the government schools tells a different story.
On September 4, for instance, TNIE found only one teacher — the headmistress — on duty at the Panchayat Union Primary School at Vandikaranur at Thondamuthur block in Coimbatore. As she taught the students of classes 4 and 5, students of classes 1-3 were seated idly in the same classroom as their class teacher was on leave. The children ought to have been revising lessons from Ennum Ezhuthum ahead of an online test, but without a teacher, the headmistress could do little more than monitor them for the day.
This is not a one-off incident. The state hasn’t recruited new teachers in a decade. As a result, there are 13,331 teaching posts vacant. This doesn’t include posts that will fall vacant as teachers retire. Similarly, around 700 HM posts too lie vacant. Educationists fear that the quality of education received by the 52,75,203 children enrolled at these schools has suffered.
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) for 2022 released by Pratham Foundation seems to bear out their fears. According to the report, which focused on rural Tamil Nadu, 59.1% of class 1 students cannot read letters based on the Tamil reading tool, while 31.1% can read letters but not words. Similarly, 42% of them cannot recognise numbers from one to nine. Only 25.2% of class 5 students and 51.3% students of class 7 students can read class 2 texts. Further, only 4.8% of class 3 students in the state are able to read class 2 texts, the lowest in the country.
Among class 8 students, only 25.5% can identify numerals from 11 to 99, only 28.6% can subtract and 57.8% read simple English sentences. The report says the state’s performance declined since 2018. While the school education department refuted the findings, educationists say that given the learning loss during the pandemic, the state should pay heed.
Education development committee coordinator Professor K Leninbarathi said, “In upper primary schools with less than 120 students, due to the teacher: student ratio of 1:35, the kids will not have teachers for each subject. In some places, you will see Social Science teachers teaching English or Tamil. Sometimes, they are able to read out the text to students as they are not subject experts.”
A Thangabasu, who teaches Science at a middle school in Coimbatore, said many schools have one post vacant. This problem is pronounced in middle schools with a strength below 150, as the department deploys teachers in a 1:35 ratio. “In such schools, there often isn’t a teacher to handle each main subject. The students don’t attain a good grasp of the fundamentals and struggle in class 9 and 10. Some students eventually drop out,” he explained. Psychologist N Rahman Khan said, “To forge the teacher-student bond, teachers must get to know students on a personal level, and motivate them to grow.”
(This is the first of a four-part series)