UPA's flagship scheme fails to teach teachers

The single biggest problem dogging the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), lack of trained teachers, continues, the Outcome Budget for 2008-09 shows.

To run the SSA, one of the world's largest programmes for educating children, the government recruits lakhs of teachers every year.

Although a number of schools have teachers "" even though hired on contract "" lack of experience continues to be a serious problem. The government has missed the target for every year despite providing a large budget for training teachers under the scheme.

The Outcome Budget for 2008-09, compiled by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), shows that the 2007-08 target was to provide 20 days training to around 3.54 million teachers, but in nine months, only 54 per cent (1.91 million) of the targeted teachers could undergo the training.

Also, the government has appointed 8,80,000 teachers, 78 per cent of the cumulative target of around 1.13 million. Dipstick surveys by Business Standard a few months ago found that in Andhra Pradesh, no elementary school teacher underwent the stipulated training and many teachers had no BEd degrees, mandatory for teaching jobs in other schools.

In the absence of teaching skills, these teachers (some without a basic degree) find it hard to teach a class of 40-50 students. That the problem is getting compounded is clear from the fact that in the last financial year (2006-07), only 87 per cent of the target was met (only around 2.95 million teachers were provided training as against the target of around 3.4 million).

However, the SSA seems to be on track when it comes to heads like infrastructure in schools. The Outcome Budget says that as against a cumulative target of 21,6237 school buildings by December-end, 18,4536 (85 per cent of the target) buildings were constructed.

The ministry even claims that as against the annual target of supplying 69.1 million free textbooks to school children, it supplied textbooks to 65.3 million children, that is, managed to meet 94 per cent of the target.