India continues to have five times the number of schools than China for the same enrolment and more than 50 per cent of primary schools across many states have an enrolment of less than 60, as per the recently released Niti Aayog report titled Learnings from Large-scale Transformation in School Education.
Niti Ayog Report: India continues to have five times the number of schools than China for the same enrolment and more than 50 per cent of primary schools across many states have an enrolment of less than 60, as per the recently released Niti Aayog report titled Learnings from Large-scale Transformation in School Education. Speaking of the report, the cost of such sub-scale schools in the form of extensive multi-grade teaching, lack of a student and parent community that can demand accountability, poor infrastructure, the same 1-2 teachers also handling all administrative responsibilities in the absence of headmasters/ principals, etc. is very high, the report further stated.
India has a shortage of more than a million teachers and several states have anywhere between 30-50 per cent teacher vacancies, the report further said. Additionally, the available teachers are not distributed equitably with more teachers available than required in urban areas and disproportionately higher vacancies in rural areas. The education systems of states cannot practically transform and deliver much higher outcomes with such high teacher vacancies.