50% teachers in schools of key states untrained: Parliamentary committee

More than 50% teachers in states like Bihar, West Bengal, Tripura and Jammu & Kashmir are untrained, a Parliamentary panel on education has noted. The panel said it is “appalled” to note the existing number of untrained teachers who are in service and what is “alarming” is the lack of efforts by the government to address these issues.

The department-related Parliamentary committee on Human Resource Development, in its report says, “The committee is appalled to note that the existing percentage of untrained teachers in active service and it is even more alarming to note that there is no visible effort to address the issue. Some of the states have extremely high number of untrained teachers like Tripura, Meghalaya, Nagaland, West Bengal, Bihar, J&K, Assam and Manipur. Some of the figures are higher than 50%.”

NK Premachandran, Lok Sabha MP from Kerala, who is a part of the panel, told DNA, “We arrived at this report after a number of examinations from different states. Most schools that have untrained teachers are un-aided schools. The rate at which un-aided schools in the country is growing is alarming too because they do not pay much attention to the qualification of teachers.”

“There were some schools where teachers were even post graduates but they did not have the qualifications to be a teacher, which is a B.Ed degree. The basic point of the committee is that government should make sure that teachers at least know how to teach, for which a B.Ed degree is required,” he added.

Even as the central government has recently amended the Right to Education Bill by which they have given time till 2019 for untrained teachers to get a B.Ed degree, the committee feels not much is done. Recently, DNA had reported about the possibility of 50,000 such untrained teachers who might lose their job as they have not even been able to register themselves for getting the required degree.

ALARMING STATE

• No. of teachers in country: 13 lakh
   
• No. of untrained teachers: 7 lakh
   
• Worst affected states: Bihar, Meghalaya, West Bengal, Tripura,  Nagaland, Assam, Manipur and J&K