Focus on equity, not standardised education

NCTE guarantees quality and standardised teaching to all learners, but neglects socioeconomic nuances

The new education policy seemingly suggests some tectonic shifts in the education system. Besides this, it believes that for quality education, what we need most are quality teachers. Setting standards for this quality teacher, it was suggested that a document may be drafted by the NCTE, which hurriedly cobbled up one titled National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST), which has been constructed to achieve the aim of NEP 2020: ‘Equitable access to the highest quality education for all learners’. It also ‘guarantees’ that all students at all levels of school education are taught by passionate, motivated, highly qualified, professionally trained, and well-equipped teachers.

This document confuses the difference between standardisation and equity in the education system. Standardisation assumes that if every individual is exposed to the very same sets of instructional conditions, it will result in the same level of knowledge among students or future citizens. Does the logic of standardisation consider the individualised nature of effective teaching and learning, and can it co-exist with equity in education where personalisation of resources to the needs of individuals is required to help achieve common
goals - are some of the questions this document skips.

The process of teaching goes through multiple and varying human contexts, references, and situations that it cannot be a mechanised product. The learner, her socioeconomic, cultural, linguistic background, curriculum, content, aims of education, evaluation along with teachers’ concerns, her educational background, subject, disciplinary pedagogy, prior training, and preparation -- there are so many factors that influence learning and learning outcomes; they are hardly uniform. The difference between teaching and indoctrination also dissuades us from setting any standards. Teaching is essentially helping a learner in her efforts for construction of knowledge. The discourse of education has arrived at this student-centric and individualised knowledge construction after a long and constant struggle with the idea of teacher-centric education. Resulting in similar learning and same learning outcomes, this behaviourist approach in educational psychology has been rejected decades ago.

The standardisation of the teaching profession is the first step towards achieving a standard society aka a developed country. In the Indian context, a survey suggests that 71.7%, 41.6%, and 31.3% of teachers are under-qualified at the respective pre-primary, primary, and upper-primary levels. These under-qualified teachers have a direct bearing on students’ learning outcomes. Thus, we need standardisation but this data should also be read along with other data which show that 60% of these teachers are teaching in private and unaided schools. Any government regulation for their standardisation would be seen as interference and poaching in the functioning and autonomy of these schools.

Implementation of NPST in public (Government) schools poses another fundamental question. The NPST document advocates ‘mentoring’ of beginner teachers by their in-house senior teachers but according to the Government of India data itself, around 1,10,000 schools have only a single teacher; who will ‘mentor’ who remains another quagmire. We have 75 women teachers at the primary level and 60 at the secondary level for every 100 male teachers at these levels respectively. This document believes that we don’t have any gender stereotypes and there is no possibility of sexual oppression and manoeuvring for mentoring and promotion of female teachers in such circumstances. Similarly, this document believes that 57% of teachers from the general category will be very generous in promotion of only 8% of Dalit teachers. This would create a new class and the social hierarchies among an already segmented and segregated teaching community.

This document suggests a four-step progression at each level, a teacher being appointed as a beginner within a specific time-frame moves to become a proficient, expert, and elite teacher at the same level. How a teacher’s salary and her service conditions at the entry-level at primary and secondary levels will be equated remains unresolved as the two levels require different levels of educational qualifications. In case of teachers for physical education, music, arts, etc., who will be deemed as a beginner or a ‘lead teacher’? Whether these teachers would be ‘mentored’ by teachers from mathematics or sciences?

The requirements weaved for career progression are equally ambiguous and vague. For example a beginner teacher must ‘exhibit’, an ‘efficient’ teacher must ‘practise’, an ‘expert’ teacher must ‘promote’ and a ‘lead’ teacher must ‘enhance’ the constitutional values. How one would demonstrate without practising or how one would promote bereft of enhancement remains to be decoded. This ambiguity resonates in the other three categories of professional ethics, autonomy, and pedagogical knowledge too.

The document hardly concerns itself with the issues of special education and differently-abled teachers and teachers of minority institutions. It also hardly acknowledges that education is a matter of concurrent list, involving federal efforts. Similar education and same teaching -- this lofty ideal hardly mentions similar salary and same service conditions for all teachers. This document equates permanently appointed government school teachers with teachers teaching in a private institution or teachers on contract. Within the government system, there are Shiksha-Mitra and Shiksha-Karmis who are hugely underpaid and have worse service conditions.

Before standardising teachers and teaching, we must standardise the idea of standardising schooling and institutionalising knowledge. From Kendriya Vidyalayas to municipal schools to rural schools, there are gaping disparities in the availability of resources and infrastructure. We may standardise curriculum-making, evaluation, teacher selection process, salary, and service conditions. In the absence of the above, the attempt for standardising teachers and teaching will remain hollow and would create newer incongruities. In light of the Indian knowledge system, if every teacher evolves into a standardised ‘Dronacharya’ then who will step into the shoes of ‘Savitribai Phule’. Lastly, the teacher is akin to ‘Govind’ in Indian parlance, it does not befit humans to standardise ‘Govind’.

(The writer is Faculty, Department of Education, Central University of Himachal Pradesh)