Teachers’ Day: Big salaam to teachers bearing the brunt of COVID even now

This year’s Teachers’ Day is the first one after the schools have fully opened post-pandemic. The online and then online-offline teaching schedule exposed teachers as well as students to a different reality which, in turn, not only raised new demands on the teachers but also put the focus back on problems that have been plaguing the teaching community for long.

The education crisis runs wide and deep. Over the past few decades, India has opened many schools but hasn’t recruited enough teachers. According to a 2021 Unesco report, the country has around 120,000 single-teacher schools, of which nearly nine in 10 are in rural areas. India requires a humongous 1.2 million more teachers to meet the shortfall, the report says.

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Other figures, too, paint a dark picture: 116 million of the world’s poorest children live in India; 55 per cent of 10-year-olds in India cannot read basic text; 75 per cent will not go to college and most who do are not fully equipped for life. The pandemic has only exacerbated this education crisis. 

Nightmarish transition

For the teachers, the transition to online classes during the pandemic was nightmarish. The unforeseen situation meant that they had to shift to a new skill platform almost overnight and without any training. Neither they nor the students were equipped well enough with devices, good connectivity, or the tech-savvy to navigate this transition. 

The personal touch of a teacher – one of the most important for learning and the most under-rated under our education system – where the teacher interacts with students face-to-face and each student has an individual identity to be managed accordingly, took a major hit. The impersonal device made it difficult for the teacher to assess performance.

Moreover, those new to the online learning modules had to spend much time recording lectures or understanding technology to deliver seamless lessons to their students on time.

Loss of writing skills

A high school teacher in a leading private Delhi school explained the problems being faced by her after the classes went fully offline. 

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“The main issue is that the students have lost their writing skills. During the pandemic the examination questions were mostly objective; students just had to tick the right answer. As a result, the process of arriving at an answer was given a go by,” the teacher, who teaches science subjects to classes XI and XII, told The Federal. 

“Not only have the writing skills gone, but critical thinking – for example, how does one reach a conclusion in a mathematical equation – too has suffered because of this,” she added.

This complaint, that students have lost their writing skills, is the same from primary classes to higher school. In the primary classes, teachers say, the students were either helped by their parents or siblings to send back the exercise given after class. “The students who during the pandemic were getting 80-90 per cent in English, after coming back to school, find it difficult to cross 50 per cent,” a primary school teacher told The Federal.

Lack of concentration

Another primary school teacher flagged the issue of lack of concentration on the part of students after the pandemic. “The students are finding it difficult to sit in the class for 40 minutes or so. They are fidgety and, as a result, their concentration is not what it used to be earlier,” she said. 

Also read: How Delhi govt transformed its schools, and the challenges it faces

Again, the concentration issue cuts across classes. While primary class students ‘fidget’, senior school students find succour in the phones and tablets that they sneak into school despite strict instructions otherwise.

Further, “students at present are more interested in interacting with their friends, something that they missed during the almost two years of online classes,” a senior class teacher said. “Also, as in senior classes, most take tuitions, they feel that what they miss in school class they’ll make up for in the tuition class,” she added. 

Syllabus pressure

All the teachers The Federal spoke to said that to deal with the current situation, they are giving more writing exercises to the students now. “If they don’t have the writing skills, even if we finish the syllabus that would be of no use to them,” as one teacher put it. On top of that, as annual results came in late this year following late board exams, the time to finish the syllabus has also been curtailed drastically.

The syllabus too has been reduced, but that only means that the students are losing out in terms of learning. If this is the situation in urban centres, it is not difficult to think how the schools in rural areas would fare.

Striking a proper work-life balance has become a real struggle for teachers, especially after the pandemic. Government teachers were even assigned COVID-19 duties in several parts of India along with the responsibility to deliver online education.

Non-teaching work

According to a study by the National Institute of Education Planning and Administration (NIEPA), teachers only spend around 19 per cent of their time in teaching while the rest of their time is filled mostly with non-teaching administrative work. Teachers can be seen checking assignments or assessments after school as they don’t get sufficient time during their shift at the school.

Another issue that teachers face is that they don’t have enough clarity about what their career path will look like if they continue in this profession. Not all teachers can be promoted; however, a clear path based on merit can be established by schools, suggest some non-government organisations in the field of education. Teachers can be made aware of what exactly is expected from them to ensure they are motivated and clear about objectives.

Every organisation conducts timely training sessions for its employees. But for some reason, some NGOs flag, most teachers are not provided with this kind of learning opportunity. Truly, the problems of a teacher in India are real.