Virtual Teachers

I wake up my children the usual way, watch them snuggling in their bedsheets the usual way, getting ready for school the usual way but then something unusual happens, the school van doesn’t arrive to pick them up for school. They dress up and switch on their laptops which is the new school now. School benches have been replaced by study tables and books with e-books but one thing has remained constant, it is the presence of teacher or we can call the virtual teacher.

It was believed that no matter how much technology advances but at least going to school will remain the same, Alas! We were wrong going to school has acquired the new definition, it is schooling from home.

The education sector in India is the sector in which maximum experiments take place and teachers have to bear the brunt of all those experiments. As such there are many crests and troughs in the career of teachers, COVID 19 pandemic has further exacerbated their problem. Once upon a time, it was the most revered profession wherein teachers were respected a lot by their pupil, but these days’ students have condescending behavior towards their teachers. This pandemic has brought out the best in some people and worst in some but our humble teachers have risen to the occasion.

Teachers now have to work doubly hard to teach their students, as such, it is difficult to manage students in normal times, in this time it has become even tougher to engage the students. It is the sheer grit of the teachers who have not only accepted the challenge head-on but have managed come up with many ingenious ways to involve their pupils.

It is not as if there are no challenges, there are challenges galore, like internet connectivity issues, children and teachers don’t have desktops, many are not conversant with the latest technologies, teachers are not  trained to use to all the modern teaching aids Then in some schools especially Government schools and schools in a small town where the real Bharat is teachers still teach on blackboards using chalk and duster and from there they had to migrate to PowerPoint slides, Microsoft teams and Zoom. It was nothing short of a miracle but most of the teachers have taken to it as fish takes to water.

The NITI Aayog’s School Education Quality Index found that a large percentage of schools across states failed to meet the Right to Education’s norms for pupil-teacher ratio — only 50% of upper primary schools in 22 states fulfilled the norms. The International Labor Organization (ILO) found that India had 14 teachers for every 1,000 under-15-year-olds. In 40 central universities, under the purview of the MHRD, out of a total of 17,047 sanctioned teaching posts, 5,651 or 33.14 percent were lying vacant.

At Delhi University alone, over 4,000 ad hoc teachers have been working for the past several years against vacant positions in colleges and departments. Posts have been advertised a couple of times, but recruitment hasn’t taken place. There are other universities wherein everything is centrally funded fare no different.

Teaching was one of the most sought after professions in India but off late due to the lucre offered by private jobs, reluctance of the Government to recruit permanent teacher situation has become really worse. Either the post remains vacant or even if it is filled it is with contractual teachers who are either unqualified or uninterested.

It is the effort, sweat and toil of the teachers which is unfathomable. We cannot measure it terms of compensation. Like pay cuts in all other professions teachers haven’t been spared either.They have also been affected to a large extent by this pandemic, some have been retrenched from their jobs while others have to work extended hours managing Covid duties.

Some of the policies to make this profession alluring to qualified candidates:

1.     System of contractual employment must be done away with and all vacancies should be filled immediately. Teachers can be on probation for a period of three years but after that employment should be guaranteed in the institute.

2.     Same emoluments to be given to contractual and permanent employees so that contractual employees also work to their fullest potential.

3.     Employment must include all benefits like PF, Medical LFA, CL, etc. as given to permanent employees to make it attractive.

4.     Maternity benefits which are given to permanent teachers should also be given to contractual teachers to make them feel secure and there is no job loss during maternity.

5.     A sufficient budget should be allocated for training the teachers especially on the new methodologies of teaching. That budget should not be left unutilized under any circumstances.

6.     It is believed that teachers in Government school play truant and do not adhere to the timings. This is not a cogent argument, with the advancement in technology all this can be taken care of.

7.     A grading system for contractual as well as for permanent teachers wherein teachers who secure the cut off grades to be made permanent and those who fail to make the cut should not get their annual increments.

Making presentations, engaging students, involving them in group activities, remotely solving all the problems and learning the modern tools and techniques of learning with no training at all it surely takes a superhuman effort to do what modern-day teachers are doing.

It is in the best interest of the nation that we value our teachers and give them the dignity and respect which they rightfully deserve. In a nation like India with a population of 130 crores it is important that we have the best-trained teachers in our country. To become a successful nation, we need quality teachers who can take up the cudgels on behalf of a nation which is short on quality teachers.

Teachers have proved it to the world that learning never stops even if the world does.

Author: Siddhartha Dua