Teachers should be treated as frontline workers, teaching should be treated at par with other professions with more hiring and more value given to teachers, these are some of the suggestions by UNESCO on World Teachers’ Day. In sync with this year’s theme, ‘Teachers at the heart of education recovery’ UNESCO released ‘State of Education Report 2021’ for India: ‘No Teachers, No Class’ in which it has listed nine suggestions to improve the lives of teachers and quality of teaching.
A significant number of teachers work with short contracts, mostly without corresponding statutory benefits, and receive low salaries as compared with regular teachers, claims the report.
It recommended that there must be an increase in the number of physical education, music, art, vocational education, early childhood and special education teachers, and their professional autonomy must be valued.
Recognizing the fact that teachers in India do not have much exposure the report recommended to ‘build teachers’ career pathways’. It also demanded, “restructure pre-service professional development and strengthen curricular and pedagogical reform among others.
Early childhood education teachers, special education teachers and private school teachers are among the most vulnerable in the system in terms of job security and working conditions, and more research is needed to understand these segments of the teaching community, said the report.
The report has recommended to increase the number of teachers and improve working conditions in northeastern states, rural areas and ‘aspirational districts’.
It further elaborated on this point, “special attention needs to be paid to rural areas, districts with high scheduled caste and tribe populations, and all across India’s northeast, where the ratio of teachers to students needs to improve and be rationalized.”
Working conditions in these ‘difficult to staff’ regions also need to be improved, including basic amenities, better provisioning of libraries, and access to information and communications technology (ICT). More state support for teacher education programs is desirable in these regions, it observed.
Other recommendations pertain to the ecosystem, and how it must support the teachers. The experts mainly from TISS Mumbai have demanded better value and recognition for the teachers where they are treated at par with other professions.
Improve the terms of employment of teachers in both public and private schools, suggested the report. It highlights that like in most other countries, the work performed by Indian teachers needs to be better recognized and valued.
“Besides, the profession needs to be treated at par with other professions or sectors. Many teachers, whether in private or in government schools, are not compensated fairly and suffer from poor working conditions,” says the report.
It also asked the governments to recognize teachers as frontline workers, and under the authors have identified that the COVID-19 pandemic shed light on the numerous crucial functions teachers perform to enable the state system to deliver services. These range from distributing mid-day meal rations, textbooks and study materials to conducting examinations, evaluating papers, participating in community awareness and even helping with vaccination drives, said the report.
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