Andhra results not encouraging

BACK TO SCHOOLPART - III

The government's network of schools has failed to deliver the goods. The Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, the government's universal education programme, sought to address the problem by appointing para-teachers or teaching assistants in large numbers. Business Standard reporters travelled to the interiors of three states "" Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh "" to see if the experiment had worked.

Mangamma's responsibilities are substantial. She teaches students from the first to the seventh standard at the government-run upper primary school at Machram village in the Mahbubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh.

Her handicap is she has not been adequately trained for the job. After clearing the senior secondary examination, she had enrolled as a Vidya (knowledge) Volunteer to teach in the primary school on a 10-month contract.

According to the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan guidelines, she should have received training for 60 days before being sent to teach. The problem is that Mangamma wasn't trained even for a day. "We did not receive any training," said the para-teacher who was on the teaching rolls of the school last year also.

With the entire country suffering from a shortage of trained teachers, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan had aimed to plug the gap through para-teachers like Mangamma. But in the villages of Andhra Pradesh, no change is visible on the horizon.

The state has recruited 11,000 Vidya Volunteers to fill the vacancies in the primary and upper-primary schools. In fact, the state has met its recruitment target of 36,300 teachers under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Still, there are several problems.

To begin with, most volunteers are not well educated and lack professional teaching skills or experience. Moreover, they do not undergo any training as envisaged under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. All the training they get is a five-day schedule they share with regular teachers.

Even the state education officials admit the failure. "We admit that Andhra Pradesh is not performing well on the training front," K Chandramouli, Project Director, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan for Andhra Pradesh, said.

"The problem with training the Vidya Volunteers is that they are recruited for a period of 10 months (academic year), after which there is no guarantee that they would teach next year also. Providing then with a two-month (60 day) training for this 10-month period does not seem to be a feasible option," Chandramouli added.

While Vidya Volunteers like Mangamma are expected to do almost all the teaching that a regular graded teacher does, the salary she got was much less "" just Rs 1,000 per month for a 10-month contract period last year.

But officials said the compensation for the volunteers would be Rs 1,500 from this academic year.

Moreover, these volunteers do not even get the teacher's grant of Rs 500 per annum, meant to buy stationery and other material to help them with their teaching.

"Selection of these volunteers is done from within the village. Though we prescribe a graduate with a B Ed degree, most of the times it is difficult to find a person with that qualification to work for Rs 1,500 that we pay them. Thus, sometimes candidates of lower qualification are found teaching at the schools in remote localities like in tribal areas," one state education official said.