A study has revealed that the state of affairs in government and aided schools was not up to the mark in the country.
The report, scheduled to be released soon, has found that the number of teachers in government schools has declined while on the other hand, it has increased in
private schools. The pupil-teacher ratio in government schools was also not up to the mark and a majority of schools had just one-third professionally trained teachers.
The startling revelations have been revealed in a study on schools, teachers and enrolment indicators based on DISE 2009-10 done by National University of Educational Planning & Administration. The report is expected to release by Union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal on February 1.
The statistics reveal that the number of teachers in government schools has seen an overall decline from 39,69,586 in 2008-09 to 39,53,790 in 2009-10.
The decline of teacher’s numbers is almost .5 per cent in government schools and over 1.2 per cent in government-aided schools during the period. The percentage of teachers rose by almost two per cent in private unaided schools during the period. The states of Assam, Haryana and Orissa saw the biggest fall in number of teachers over this period.
The pupil-teacher ratio in government schools was the worst in the states of Bihar (57), Jharkhand (43), Madhya Pradesh (37), Uttar Pradesh (42) and West Bengal (43). The national average of pupil-teacher ratio stood at a dismal 33 during 2009-10, which shows an improvement of one point over the last year. The average pupil-teacher ratio in unaided schools stooped at 30. The study has also revealed that there is a huge shortage of professionally trained teachers in the country. The worst performers are Arunachal Pradesh which has only 26.3 per cent professionally trained regular teachers.