5 Reasons Why Teaching Quality is Poor in India

Introduction: The Indian teacher, once a foot soldier in the freedom struggle and a contributor to nation building in the early years after Independence, now stands relegated to the margins of public life.

1. Poor Quality Graduates: Graduates whose college education is of poor quality cannot be expected to overcome their learning backlog at a training institute.
2. National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE) Failed as a Regulator: The teacher-training sector became so afflicted by fraudulent institutions and practices that internal mechanisms of correction proved inadequate. Hundreds of cases against bogus institutions reached the Supreme Court, which appointed a commission chaired by late Justice J.S. Verma. For a few years after 2012, when its report was published, an attempt was made to implement its recommendations, but the momentum slowed down before long.
3. Difficult to Sustain Idealism: In a consumption-oriented environment, the kind of idealism school teaching requires is not easy for a young person to cultivate and sustain. The working conditions and ethos at their respective schools erode the stamina of the few who start with a sense of dedication.
4. Family’s cooperation to teachers has receded: Many parents now treat their progeny’s school life as an ‘investment’ for which they demand the best ‘value’, often by relentlessly criticising the teacher and the principal. They don’t know the burden teachers carry on their fragile, ill-equipped professional shoulders. This burden includes the weight of family and community life, and the pressure coming from officialdom.
5. Lure of the Coaching Industry: Para-professionals have been growing in number and influence. They are known by various names in different States, but they also exist in vast numbers outside the system — as providers of home tuition and coaching. This underbelly of the education system suffers no interference from state norms. In the world of coaching, we see the utopia of free enterprise and the demise of teaching as noble work.