Ever wondered if the prejudices surrounding education in Bihar is a myth or a reality?
Through this article let us analyse the situation and try to arrive at a viable conclusion. One of the foremost reasons for the degrading education system can be accounted to the teachers in the state or the lack thereof.
A Teacher is a Mentor, her role in a student’s life is paramount as she forms the fundamental structure of academia which forms the fulcrum of a student’s life journey. But the question here arises:
Does every school in the country have qualified teachers with cognizance degrees?
Are all teachers with a degree able to pass on the same to students easily ?
Does it mean if someone is a teacher, she will definitely know the vast aspect of the area she is teaching?
Generally, people would say “Yes” because if a person is a Teacher, she has become one on the basis of her ability to impart knowledge to others.
Here comes the problem, the scenario is vastly different from our beliefs and the state of Bihar is surging up with the same problem for years.
The shortage of Teachers in Bihar has been a problem for years. Bihar is ranked the highest in terms of poor student-teacher Ratio. For Example, there are only 30000 teachers for 52 lakh students in class 11th and 12th. It means if there is 1 teacher for 173 students, we can imagine how consequential the situation is in Bihar. There are more teachers for elementary education but secondary education is most affected as the paucity of teachers is highest in this case.
45% of teachers have qualifications till intermediate only, then 32% are graduates and the rest number is for postgraduates.
Now Suppose, if we keep the shortage of teachers problem aside, the main issue we talk about is the existing teachers’ potential to impart the right quality of information/knowledge to students in the most understandable way.
With Surveys conducted in Bihar among 2000 teachers by ASER CENTRE OF PRATHAM for WORLD BANK SURVEY, it has been concluded that however most of the teachers were able to solve the basic questions of Percentage, BODMAS, Division, Data interpretation but only a few of them were acquainted with the ability to explain it to the student in a proper manner.
For Example, If 67.8 % of teachers were able to do question-related to percentage correctly but only 15.1% out of it were able to explain it thoroughly.and similar case was with other domain of questions.
What do you think, where is the problem actually?
There are tremendous reasons for the above prevailing problem in Bihar. This includes the inadequate amount of revenue decided for education, the lack of training centers for teachers, improper infrastructure facilities, no clean toilet facilities especially for women teachers, ignorance of the government in maintaining quality education, negligence of government while investigating the teacher problems. All these problems culminate to become the bigger problem which is making Bihar state literacy rate only 63.82% which is the lowest among all states of the country.
The people, the government, the NGOs, the campaigns can play a crucial role in developing the education sector in Bihar.
To not let the current Campaigns, NGOs who are working for the rise in the education system go in vain, we should participate in their endeavors and make Bihar population more educated and independent because as we remember one thing :
“Padhega India toh Badhega India”
- Kashish Changrani, second year student of Economics at Kirori Mal College and a volunteer at EdJustice.