15% of schools run by a single teacher
Our Correspondent
Kohima | November 7
Minister for School Education & SCERT, Yitachu today revealed that as many as 42% of teachers are yet to be trained in Nagaland, while 15% of government schools are being run by a single teacher.
“Teachers need to be professionally trained,” he said while addressing a two day ICSSR sponsored national seminar on ‘Quality teacher education: Issues and challenges of two year B.Ed programme’ under the aegis of the Department of Teacher Education and School of Humanities & Education, Nagaland University (NU) here at NU Kohima Campus, Meriema.
He said another five years have been extended to train all those untrained teachers. Presently, there are 24,000 teachers in the state. The Minister said ‘Right to Education’ has brought about a lot of improvement in infrastructure, opening of new schools and also up-gradation of schools across the country.
He however conceded that it has certain negative aspect as well. He regretted that when it comes to addressing quality education, it appears to have failed. The Minister also pointed to the huge drop-out rate at the primary level, further adding that enrolment in government schools has come down.
“We cannot afford to continue this trend,” he said adding that time has come to take a positive step.
He also stated that despite huge increase in the number of teachers, there are cases where there is only a single teacher in some schools. 15% of schools, he informed have single teachers. The Minister revealed that there are 172 such primary and middle schools in the state.
He further stated that there are more schools than actually required, and pointed to this as having a negative impact on the education system.
Yitachu stated that the non-detention policy has also adversely affected the education system. He said teachers must take things in the right perspective. The Minister expressed hope that the seminar would come out with a concrete resolution to enable the decision making body to feature the same in its action plan.
