JOIN USThough schools are aplenty in the City, the dearth of teachers is significant.Even as parents are busy hunting for schools of their interest, schools in turn find themselves in a fix over shortage of teachers.
Moreover, school managements find it most difficult to find teachers for social science, science and mathematics.
Speaking to Deccan Herald, principal of a private school in Nagarbhavi recounted how the management has been struggling to recruit teachers for core subjects, for the past four years.
“Schools have to shell out exorbitant amount towards salaries for science and mathematics teachers. Despite that it is difficult to retain them for long,” he added.
If recruiting and retaining science and mathematics teachers is tough, finding a social studies teacher is the toughest, said a few school principals.
Not many students who have pursued Arts in their bachelor’s degree look towards teaching in schools as a lucrative career option. As graduates in history and geography pursue other allied courses, it is extremely difficult to find teachers for the subjects, said Sudha Pragna, principal of Everton English School.
Sudha Pragna who has been in the teaching profession for nearly three decades noted that paucity of school teachers is fuelled by the boom in the IT industry in the past decade.
Finally, a majority of the students who complete BEd are from the Kannada medium, who find it hard to communicate in English, the medium of instruction in many schools, she added.
However, Lakshmi Rao, principal of National Public School, Koramangala, believes that archaic syllabus of the BEd course fails to attract people towards teaching in schools.
“Teachers should be encouraged to be abreast with technology and its use. Earlier, teachers took up teaching for the sheer passion of educating and moulding the
personalities of children, however, now it is merely treated as a job,”she said.
Lack of adequate and qualified teachers has been a persistent problem.
The crisis needs to be addressed at the earliest before it is blown out of proportion, said G S Sharma of Karnataka Unaided Schools Management Association (KUSMA).
Old syllabus, lack of awareness about the profession coupled with low salary are some of the factors that discourage students from opting for teaching in schools, he said.