Get better teachers

If the Annual Survey of Education Report brings only good tidings, the threat of complacency taking over would be real. This yearly survey, which covered 5.7 lakh children in 34,000 households in 16,497 villages in 2014, has been acting more like a reality-check that should shake the nation into action so that we do not leave the emerging generation in limbo.

Shocking revelations on learning outcomes being poor and reading standards being even poorer in rural schools should be an eye-opener for planners.

The good news from ASER 2014 is that school infrastructure has picked up uniformly around the country. There are many more “pucca” classrooms and teachers than before, besides which new teaching methods and out-of-syllabus learning have helped show an improvement.

The biggest problem remains the quality of teaching. What the stagnation or fall in reading levels of schoolchildren indicates is that rural teachers need to improve out of sight.

The deterioration at the lowest levels, particularly in maths and reading, is suggestive of maths and language skills being inadequate in teachers. Unless that is remedied by enabling schools to find better teachers, the system is not going to permit great progress, whatever the empirical data might suggest in fulfilling survey criteria.

Teachers have the biggest role to play in keeping children interested in learning; otherwise, rural parents would find using their children in professional chores too tempting.