Page 16 - EW April 2023

Education News

has been reported from IITs in the last secondary school teachers,
five years,” Union minister of state for very few universities offer
education Subhash Sarkar informed it as a study programme.
the upper house, that seven cases of Teacher training is provid-
suicide have been reported in the IITs. ed by an estimated 574 pri-
While there is no data maintained vate B.Ed colleges, most of
by the Central government regarding whom offer it as a distance
caste discrimination in Central uni- learning study programme,
versities, the number of suicides in which is difficult to fail.
the IIMs, IITs and NITs is alarming. Moreover, with teach-
According to Sarkar, 61 students from ers remuneration in the
these top-ranking education institutes country’s 1.20 million
have died by suicide with IITs report- government schools
ing the highest number at 33. linked with Pay Commis-
Meanwhile, despite IIT-B’s inter- sion scales paid to Central
nal investigation committee denying Deepak Kesarkar: private sector involvement and state government
caste oppression, the Mumbai Police employees, government
has registered an FIR against un- Institute of Banking Personnel Selec- teachers’ jobs have transformed into
known persons for allegedly indulg- tion (IBPS) and IT consulting and high wage islands, with government
ing in caste-based discrimination af- services behemoth Tata Consultancy school teachers earning 5-6 mul-
ter a special investigative team found Services, both of whom have excel- tiples of the remuneration of private
a suicide note allegedly written by lent reputations to lose and can be school teachers. As a result, numer-
Darshan. Also while responding to the expected to do a good job of teacher ous teacher recruitment scams have
APPSC complaint, NCST made several selection and recruitment. broken out all over the country with
recommendations to IIT-B to stamp With remedial education not ad- politicians and bureaucrats pulling
out caste offences on campus. dressed after the 81-week pandemic all strings to land kith and kin gov-
That instead of being united on the lockdown of schools statewide, learn- ernment school teaching jobs.
issue of stamping them out, students ing outcomes in Maharashtra’s rural Against this backdrop of a
in higher education are importing schools have regressed to pre-2012 downright mess in teacher training
primeval social prejudices into insti- levels, according to the authoritative and recruitment, the Maharashtra
tutions of higher learning, tells a sorry Annual Status of Education Report government’s proposal to clean up
tale of their mindset. (ASER) 2022. From an already the mess by getting IBPS and TCS —
Nitish Kashyap (Mumbai) abysmal 27.3 percent in 2018, the two highly reputable private sector
percentage of class III children in companies — to impartially recruit
New teacher rural public and private schools who 30,000 teachers is a promising
can read class II level textbooks has
initiative. Whether this initiative can
recruitment initiative plunged to 20.5 percent. be sustained or expanded — given
the lucrative ‘business’ that teacher
Moreover, according to a Multiple
Indicator Survey (MIS) report of training and recruitment has become
onfronted with scary data that the National Sample Survey Of- — is a moot point.
learning outcomes of children fice (NSSO), released last month Aartie Rau (Pune)
Cand youth in India’s most in- (March), 68.9 percent of India’s
dustrialised state are in free fall, the youth in the 15-29-year age group are WEST BENGAL
Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena-BJP unable to execute even basic com-
government has taken time off from puter functions. Another key finding Chaos & confusion
politicking to address the problem. of the survey is that the majority of
On March 16, Deepak Kes- a sample group —73 percent — lacks t a time when kolkata’s dailies
arkar, Maharashtra’s minister of basic email skills. were headlining the Ham-
school education, announced that Within academia and society, it Aburg-based Institute for Life-
30,000 teaching jobs will soon be is widely accepted that the major long Learning (UIL) — one of UNES-
filled by high-quality teachers who causative factor behind rock-bottom CO’s key education-related institutes
have cleared the stiff Teacher Apti- learning outcomes of children and and the only organisational unit in the
tude and Intelligence Test (TAIT). youth is poor quality of teachers. UN family that holds a global mandate
He added that the task of conduct- Although a postgrad B.Ed qualifica- for lifelong learning — expressing in-
ing TAIT has been outsourced to the tion is mandatory for all primary and terest in West Bengal’s education sys-

16 EDUCATIONWORLD APRIL 2023