'Severe shortage of teachers in public schools'

Severe shortage of teachers in public schools makes quality education a far cry for children, says a study conducted by a child rights NGO.

The study by Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) and Child Rights and You (CRY) reveals that notwithstanding increased budgetary allocations for school education in many states, scarcity of duly qualified teachers and lack of proper school infrastructure are the major pain points that still remain.

The study analysed the school education budgets for six states - Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

It brought to fore that even though the states have increased funding for school education in the 14th Finance Commission period, they have not fully utilised their budgets to change the composition of their school education spending.

This has led to a crunch in allocation of resources, including adequate number of professionally qualified teachers and required infrastructure among others, the study found.

Dearth of qualified teachers has compelled many states to recruit under-qualified and contractual teachers.

Bihar has the highest proportion of untrained teachers both at the elementary and secondary level, followed by West Bengal.

As per the report, Bihar has 38.7 per cent professionally unqualified teachers at the elementary and 35.1 per cent at the secondary level. West Bengal, on the other hand, reported a shortfall of 31.4 per cent and 23.9 per cent of qualified teachers at the elementary and secondary levels, respectively.