Sunil Kumar
One of the key factors responsible for providing quality education in schools is the number of the teachers in the school for the given number of students and is calculated as Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR). PTR is the average number of students per teacher at each level in a school. As per the RTE Act, 2009, PTR at primary level should be 30:1 and at the upper primary level it should be 35:1. It means if a primary school has upto 30 students, it will be provided only one teacher. If there are 31-60 students, two teachers will be provided. Similarly, there will be only one teacher for teaching classes 6th-8th if these classes have upto 35 students; and two teachers if the number of students is 36-70. Being a teacher, it is very difficult and confusing for me to see justification before this PTR. A primary school has 5 numbers of classes (1st to 5th). Let’s assume that the school has 30 students in a single class. In such a case, there seems some possibility for the teacher to teach the students in a better way as she has to teach only 4-5 subjects while she has 6 periods of 40 min duration. But, how to teach a total of 30 students of 5 different classes by a single teacher? Is it possible to teach 23 subjects in 6 periods by a single teacher? She has to teach an average of 4 subjects in each period. And teaching 4 subjects of 4 different classes in a single period means devoting only 10 minutes for each subject. In such a case; how can we expect quality? Remember, she also has to maintain Mid-day-Meal and other official records everyday in addition to filling data on online portals. The same problem may be there in upper-primary (with primary section) schools. An upper primary school with 40 students reading in 8 different classes is provided with only two teachers (as per the provision of RTE Act, 2009) who have to teach about 40 subjects. It means each teacher has to teach an average of 20 subjects in 6 periods. Now, when the NEP-2020 is all set to be implemented in JK UT, one more wing, that is, ECCE has also been added in the schools. This will be adding even more burden on teachers who are already overburdened due to shortage of teaching staff. NEP-2020; no doubt has come up with a number of landmark recommendations like bringing ECCE in the pattern of formal education, new 5+3+3+4 curricular structure, focus on vocational education and coding right from Class 6th onwards, holistic report card and much more. But, how to implement all this without a sufficient number of teachers? As far as PTR is concerned, the policy (NEP-2020) has recommended almost the same criteria as set by RTE Act, 2009. As per NEP-2020; a pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) of under 30:1 will be ensured at the level of each school while in the areas having large numbers of socio-economically disadvantaged students, the aim may be 25:1. So, the problem is again the same. In implementing such a PTR, teaching 30 students at primary/upper-primary level is somewhat possible for a single teacher if all the students belong to a single class as the teacher has to teach only 4-5 subjects. But, providing quality education to 30 students of multiple classes by a single teacher is almost impossible and will be a total injustice with the future of the children.
In my opinion, there is a need to modify the criteria set to determine PTR. Instead of considering PTR at primary/upper-primary level, it should be considered at class level. Every class with 1-30 numbers of students should be provided 1 teacher and with 31-60 students should be provided 2 teachers. Suppose an Upper-Primary school (with primary section) is running classes 1st to 8th. And there are less than 30 students in each class; then there should be a minimum of 8 teachers in the school. If a class has 31-60 students, then one extra teacher should be provided and so on. Similarly, assuming that each class has 1-30 students; a primary school must have a minimum of 5 teachers i.e. one teacher for each class. What if a primary school has a total of 15 students with 5 different classes? Should there be only 1 teacher as per the PTR norms set by RTE Act-2009 and NEP-2020? If it is so, then in this case, PTR is 15:1 which is there in a large number of schools in J&K; and is much better than average PTR at national level. In such a high PTR, many of us may wrongly expect better learning outcomes without looking the same through another perspective. Such a situation will increase the workload on the teacher as she has to teach all subjects of 5 different classes in addition to other official assignments. As the students will not get proper time to study all the subjects regularly, this situation may adversely affect their studies which may force them to drop schools in the long run. In short, quality education is not possible without giving sufficient time and sufficient number of teachers to students. There is an urgent need to think over it on priority.
(The writer is a National Awardee Teacher and is presently working at Govt. Middle school Jakhar,
Tikri, Udhampur).