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Not enough teachers in Indian state schools

India: English From Class I, But Are There Enough Teachers?

In news that will be Unsurprising for anyone remotely familiar with any state school system anywhere in the world, an acute shortage of teachers in government-run schools across Uttar Pradesh may stymie the state government’s plan to introduce English as a subject from Class 1. The state government announced the plan Saturday, but “at present, about 150,000 teachers are required in nearly 125,000 government-run primary schools in the state,” Basic Education Teachers Association (BETA) vice-president Ram Teerath Mishra told IANS here. “Nearly half of the primary schools in the state are single-teacher schools.”

There are fewer primary school teachers than primary schools run by the government in some districts, including Bahraich, Shrwasti and Lalitpur. “It would have been better if the government had first recruited the teachers required in the primary schools before taking the decision,” laments Mishra.

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