Government Schools in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar Lack Basic Facilities

Imparting quality education is extremely important in India. For India to grow and develop, it is important that the literacy rate should improve drastically. As we all know that not everyone in India can afford to study in private schools, therefore it is very crucial for the government to open new government schools and at the same time raise the standards of the existing schools under its care. On one hand private schools these days provide world class facilities such as modern infrastructure, highly technical labs, well qualified teachers etc. whereas on the other hand the government schools are hardly able to provide even half of these facilities.

Generally, government schools lack basic facilities like good infrastructure, proper sanitation, educated teachers etc. For over - all growth and development of India, it is immensely important to bring up the standards of public schools and bring at par with the private institutions. One of the basic facility that the government schools lack is good quality of teachers. As per reports, there is shortage of almost 5 lakh teachers in elementary schools and 14 % of government secondary schools donot have even a minimum of 6 teachers. According to a study by Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) and Child Rights and You (CRY) among all the six states namely Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu; Uttar Pradesh and Bihar together consist of 4.2 lakhs of vacant posts in government schools. On the contrary, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are in a much better condition. These states have recruited teachers on almost 95% of the sanctioned posts at the elementary posts. According to statistics, Bihar has the highest proportion of untrained teachers at both the elementary and secondary level. Presently, Bihar has 38.7 per cent professionally unqualified teachers at the elementary and 35.1 per cent at the secondary level respectively. Similarly, West Bengal lacks 31.4 per cent and 23.9 per cent of qualified teachers at the elementary and secondary levels, respectively. Although, the states have raised the funding for school education in the 14th Finance Commission, yet the states have not completely used their budgets to amend the composition of their school education spending. Resultantly, it has led to a crisis in the allocation of resources. Due to the shortage of qualified teachers, a lot of states had to enrol teachers on a contractual post due to lack of appropriate qualification.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://indianexpress.com/article/education/severe-shortage-of-teachers-in-public-schools-highest-in-up-bihar-report-5508949/