Transfer sword over government school teachers

The solution to this old, entrenched problem is in school-based recruitment. Private schools enjoy this freedom. Why can’t it work for government schools? The reasons are many…

Entering the foyer of a rural government school, I noticed a list painted on the wall. It displayed the names of eight teachers. Their qualifications, dates of joining, subjects and classes they taught were all mentioned. It was an impressive display of staff strength for a rural government school. While I was studying the list, the Headmaster came by and I asked him if all the eight teachers were present. I had heard about the problem of teacher absenteeism across Hindi belt states. What he told me was quite different and from the point of view of children, far worse than absenteeism.

He revealed that six of the eight teachers mentioned in the list had been transferred in September. Six months later, their posts are still vacant. “We have been waiting, that’s why the list has not been repainted,” he said. The village Panchayat had also written several times to the district education officer, asking for the vacancies to be filled, but there was no response. I asked the Headmaster how he manages the school with so many vacancies. He said he invites young unemployed men in the village to take classes.

This state of affairs is not only common, but widely accepted as a necessary feature of education governance. The logic is that teachers are recruited by state governments, so they have to be allocated to schools by state governments according to existing needs. The match between needs and number of teachers available is usually disproportionate.Moreover once they are recruited, teachers want to serve in schools close to their homes. Pressures to seek convenient postings arise and mostly lead to corruption among those invested with the responsibility and power to relocate teachers. These are district-level officers and their counterparts at the state level. Politicians play a key role in managing the pressure dynamics — say, between rival claimants to one available post.

When transfer orders are given, no one thinks about the children. I remember a group of class X children in a Haryana school, desperately asking me for help. What could I do? Their mathematics teacher had been transferred ahead of their board exams. As usual, no substitute was sent. The principal was helpless and nervous about exam results.

Every government school has similar stories. And then you have individual tales of ‘punishment posting’ for poor results. What it takes for a teacher or principal to look for a home in a new village or district is something the powerful bureaucracy ignores completely. The last time a committee was appointed to look into housing problems confronting rural teachers was in the late 1950s. Lucky teachers are those who serve in a Central government-promoted Kendriya Vidyalaya or Navodaya Vidyalaya schools which provide on-campus housing. This privileged category of schools provides teachers a life altogether different from that of the common government school teacher. The transfer sword hangs over their heads all the time.

The solution to this old, entrenched problem is in school-based recruitment. Private schools enjoy this freedom. Why can’t it work for government schools? The reasons are many, and they are all rooted in the inertia of custom and the mindset that sustains it. In colonial times, no government employee was trusted to remain dedicated to his job if he stayed too long in one place. Transfer was the means to keep everyone on his toes. This centralised command system continues to invest power in bureaucrats and politicians, and they enjoy it. A few states tried to reform the transfer system, by creating a rational set of rules. It helped a little and worked for some time, but the deeper ramifications of centralised control on teachers’ lives remained intact.

Under Panchayati Raj provisions, centralised recruitment has shifted in some states to lower levels. This change has eased some of the older problems, but it has also brought in new problems related to quality of entrants into the profession. The catchment area under the local recruitment policy shrinks. It is not like countries where anyone can apply for a state school job advertisement. Also, the Panchayat’s control is not benign in every case. The teacher needs to be a good handler of political pressure to keep the Panchayat happy. It’s not enough to be merely a good, sincere teacher.

Let me conclude by going back to the account of my visit to a rural school in Madhya Pradesh. As I walked around the village, I noticed little signboards advertising coaching classes. I stopped at one of them and met the young man who runs a coaching centre. He showed me the narrow room where some 40 children of different ages receive private tuition in different subjects. As one might expect, the two most popular subjects for coaching — for three to 14-year olds — are English and mathematics. The coaching this tutor offers is based on cheap guide books available at his own shop. It is hard to say whether the facility he runs reflects parental anxiety about the quality of teaching in government schools where the children are enrolled, or merely the urge to keep children occupied. The young man also helps the children with their homework.

(Dr. Krishna Kumar is honorary professor of education, Panjab University, and a former Director of NCERT)