Private School Teachers Need Training More Than Government Schools: NIOS Data

New Delhi: The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS)’s service for untrained teachers has seen 9.25 lakh teachers from private schools and 3.5 lakh teachers from government, government-aided schools signing up.

The chairman of NIOS, CB Sharma, said that nearly three-fourths of applicants for the Diploma in Elementary Education have been from in-service teachers.

The highest enrollment came from Bihar, which had 2,85,234 applicants, with the confirmed number of seats being recorded at 2,47,947.

Given that West Bengal has not followed any of the HRD’s recent circulars on special occasions, the state’s teachers responded to the training by sending in 1,69,008 applicants, with 1,48,895 being confirmed admissions. The number of teachers enrolled for the service in Uttar Pradesh were 1,95,353 and 1,32,799 have been confirmed, while Madhya Pradesh has 1,91,510 teachers enrolled with 1,45,048 having confirmed admissions.

During the training programme’s launch, Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar had said that quality of education was every student’s right.

“The government is committed to improving the education system and will be training approximately 15 lakh untrained teachers by 31st March 2019.”

Under this program, all untrained teachers are to receive formal trained by March 21st, 2019. Teachers will get diploma after successful completion of the course.

Citing the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, educationist and lawyer Ashok Agarwal pointed out the dropout rate was less, even though the numbers of untrained teachers enrolled in the HRD ministry program were high. “The program has just launched and its effectiveness can only be confirmed after the results but private schools give more attention to students and parents feel the child’s foundation in education become stronger.”

“Government schools have become rehabilitation centers where students are recruited on human interest considerations rather than capability to deal with the education provided to them. Those rejected by government schools go to private schools and ultimately end up paid much less than them,” he added.

The training facility was earlier available only for government school teachers and is now being extended to teachers from private schools as well. “No one will lose their job for the in-service training,” said Sharma.

The National Institute of Open Schooling has prepared study material for untrained teachers in 11 languages — English, Hindi, Bengali, Odia, Tamil, Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Telugu, Kannada and Assamese. It is an initiative in Online and Distance Learning (ODL) mode of National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) for upgrading the professional competence and Information and Communication-based capacity building for teachers.