MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
(SHRI UPENDRA KUSHWAHA)
(a) & (b) : The recruitment and service conditions of Government teachers are primarily in the domain of respective State Governments and UT Administrations. The Central Government through the flagship programme of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) at elementary level and Secondary level provides assistance to State/UT government for additional teachers to maintain appropriate Pupil Teacher Ratio as per the prescribed norms for various levels of schooling. The vacancy of teachers has reduced from 9,70,205 in the year 2015-16 to 9,48,803 in the year 2016-17 at elementary and Secondary levels. The details of the vacant posts of teachers in Elementary schools is at Annexure-I and in Secondary Schools at Annexure-II. The status of vacant posts of Special Educators approved under RMSA is at Annexure – III.
(c): The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 has been enacted for universalization of elementary education i.e. for classes I to VIII across the country. The RTE Act, 2009 in its Schedule lays down pupil teacher ratio (PTR) for both primary and upper primary schools. At primary level the PTR should be 30:1 and at the upper primary level it should be 35:1. The RMSA framework stipulates that the PTR at secondary level should be 30:1. As per Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) 2015-16 (Provisional), the PTR at national level for elementary schools is 24:1 and for secondary schools it is 27:1. The PTR in most of the States and UTs is found to be satisfactory. However, since some schools have lesser number of teachers than the required PTR, it is clear that while there is sufficient number of teachers, the main issue is of their optimum deployment in schools.
The reasons for shortage of teachers are procedural delays in teacher recruitment processes, non availability of professionally qualified persons and insufficient number of candidates not qualifying the Teacher Eligibility Test(TET) conducted by the appropriate Government and lack of subject specialist teacher in certain areas.
(d) & (e): Under section 23(1) of Right to Education Act 2009, the Central Government has notified National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE) as the academic authority to lay down minimum qualification for a person eligible to become an elementary teacher. Additionally, the appropriate authority is also mandated to conduct the Teacher Education Test (TET) to ensure that qualified persons enter the teaching profession. Further, under SSA and RMSA, various type of training programme have been introduced to improve quality of teachers which includes in-service teacher training to Headmasters/Principal, Master Trainers Training, Training of Key Resource Persons, Induction Training of Teachers, Headmaster’s/Principals Professional Development/ Management and Leadership training of Headmasters & State Resource Groups (SRGs).
Additionally, the Central Government has been consistently pursuing the matter of expeditious recruitment and redeployment of teachers with the States and UTs at various fora. Advisories on this issue have also been issued to States and UTs from time to time.
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