“Name the first five chapters in the textbook that you teach.” “What are learning indicators?” “In light of your salary, what is the expenditure per student that is incurred in your class?” 

These questions drew blank stares and wrong answers from 100-plus primary school teachers in Uttar Pradesh who were interviewed in the preliminary round before being shortlisted for the National Teachers’ Awards conferred annually by the President of India on Teacher’s Day (September 5). Despite failing to answer most of these questions, UP’s primary, upper primary and secondary school teachers bagged 30 of the 374 Teachers’ Day Awards last year. 

The initial recommendations for these awards are made by the state government’s DIET (District Institute of Education and Training) in each district, followed by interviews conducted by the Basic Education Department of the education ministry which finalises the list of teachers for the presidential awards. Unsurprisingly, the entire process of shortlisting the teacher awardees is conducted in a slapdash manner and favouritism and nepotism are rife. 

Despite large numbers of UP’s teachers mysteriously winning presidential and other awards, the plain truth is that the quality of teachers in the state’s 169,000 government and aided schools in particular, is often ridiculed — to no effect — by the media. In one video which has gone viral in UP, a school principal was recorded as identifying a municipal corporator as the author of the national anthem. Another government school principal opined that Lucknow is the administrative capital of the country and a third spelt ‘eight’ as ‘eigteet’. In this connection it’s noteworthy that in the financial year 2016-17, of the Rs.41,000 crore budgeted for basic education, more than half (Rs.24,000 crore) was expended by way of salaries to the state’s ill-qualified government school teachers.

The outcome of unworthy teachers being recruited for primary education is that only 79 percent of children in the state transition from primary to upper primary education against the national average of 90 percent. Comments Madhusudan Dixit, a well-known Lucknow-based teacher training activist: “A government teaching job is widely accepted as one of the easiest and most lucrative in the state. Even good quality teachers who enter government schools are rendered incapable by a system that thrives on mediocrity.”

The newly elected BJP government headed by its saffron-clad monk Yogi Adityanath who was appointed chief minister in March, is seized of the problem and has announced several measures to ensure that government school teachers — notorious for truancy — take classes. Among them: biometric attendance of teachers; pasting class teachers photographs on classroom walls to discourage proxy teaching; a directive to district officials to conduct random checks to ascertain teacher attendance, and unprecedented reviews of teachers by their students. 

However, these directives don’t focus on improving the quality of teachers ensconced in UP’s beleaguered government schools which are experiencing a continuous flight of students to budget private primaries. A 2016 report of the Delhi-based National University of Educational Planning & Administration (NUEPA) titled Working Conditions of Teachers in Uttar Pradesh says that “opportunities (within the system) for upgrading professional qualifications are poor and in-service trainings (sic) are average. They (teachers) also shared that they do not view training programmes as an opportunity to upgrade their skills. Rather, they attend these programmes in order to comply with official orders.”

Providing meaningful education to the 36 million children enrolled in Uttar Pradesh’s 169,857 government and aided schools is certain to prove a herculean task for the state’s saffron-clad chief minister whose tutors and mentors — to further compound the problem — have their own regressive ideas about quality education. 

Puja Awasthi (Lucknow)