Teachers blame poor parents for dismal learning standards in Haryana’s state schools

One day in late July some 50 primary schoolteachers were gathered in Bhiwani, Haryana, to be trained in new techniques for teaching primary school mathematics. A fresh-faced master instructor – recently trained at a workshop in Gurgaon – outlined how beads could be used to explain place values.

A grey-haired teacher in the front row interrupted him saying that he would like to demonstrate how he had taught this concept over the years. As he set out his technique before the group, some nodded in agreement. The teacher then returned to his seat.

The master trainer, a look of dejection on his face, quickly concluded the process he had been explaining before the interruption, and exhorted the teachers to always take a string of beads to class.

Parents to blame?

The Haryana government, embarrassed by its low score in annual learning outcomes reports, is trying to fix its education system, and the training workshop in Bhiwani was part of this exercise. But after the session, the teachers said that the problem was not with their method of teaching but that some children just did not learn and they could not be held back in a class because of the Right to Education mandated no-detention policy.

Were the children in their schools stupid?

“No, no” said one teacher, “all children are talented, but their parents lack awareness.”

And how did the lack of awareness among parents affect, say, a talented Class 3 child’s ability to learn mathematics?

“They don’t make them do homework,” another responded. “In primary school, repetition is very important. If they don’t do homework, how will they remember what they did in class?”

This complaint runs like a refrain through schools in the state, as does the belief that not being strict with children – shorthand for beating them – ruins them.

Mukesh, a primary school teacher in Gurgaon, explained the problem. “The parents are very poor, they work long hours, they don’t have time for their children,” she said. “The only way to make a parent visit the school is to tell them the money [that the government transfers for books and uniforms] has come.” Her colleagues and almost every teacher this reporter interviewed repeated the same point almost verbatim.

Caste and class

Most of these teachers had themselves studied in government schools.

When asked what had changed since their time, Sunil Goswami, a primary school teacher in Kutail in Karnal district, said: “in our time everyone studied in government schools. Teachers were strict. And, there were more general students. Now its mostly SC-BC [Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes].”

When asked who their students were, teachers identified them as “SC-BC”, “children of the labour class” or “children of the poor”. No teacher identified them as children from the neighbourhood or the village. At the start of every school year teachers go door to door canvassing for new admissions from the poor neighbourhoods in their school district. Without these children many government schools would close down and many teachers could be made redundant.

There are over 22 lakh children in government schools in Haryana. The majority of these children (79%) are Dalit or from the Other Backward Classes. However, the majority of Haryana’s government primary schoolteachers are from the forward castes. Just 2% are Dalit and 21% are from the Other Backward Classes. In urban areas like Gurgaon, a large number of government school students are children of migrant workers from other states.

Recent survey data published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training shows that 45% of Class 5 students in Haryana’s government and government-aided schools got between 0%-35% answers correct in a reading comprehension exercise while some 19% got between 35%-50% answers right. Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Classes students did significantly worse than other students.

Teachers and district education officials (many of them former teachers) bristled at the suggestion that caste and class are factors in how teachers view their students, and in their unwillingness to take responsibility for their low learning levels.

In Haryana’s primary schools, students have the same teacher from Class 1 to Class 5. Yet the fact that so many children barely learn to read over five years suggests that for most of them things are not going as they should inside the classroom, and the teacher is unable or unwilling to do what it takes.

Where teachers' kids go

It is generally accepted that the massive shift from public to private schools was a consequence of the poor quality of government schools and negligent, often absent teachers. Given the option, parents with a little extra income send their children to a school that is better regarded, where teachers actually take classes, the infrastructure is in good condition, school uniforms are smart, and ideally where English is officially the medium of instruction.

The majority of schoolteachers in Haryana send their children to private schools. At the workshop in Bhiwani, only three of over 50 teachers said that their children had attended the government primary schools where they were employed. But even their children had moved to private secondary schools.

Ashok Kumar, the head teacher of the government primary school in Kutail, pays Rs 1,700 a month in fees for a “fully air-conditioned” private school for his daughter, and said that “private, is best”. The children of all his colleagues were in or had been in private schools too.

When asked whether sending their children to private schools was not a vote against themselves, government teachers, who are much better paid and in general much better qualified than private school teachers, tended to compare their working conditions with those of teachers in private schools that had guaranteed power supply, fans in all rooms proper toilets, water supply and no non-school related work.

The Right to Education Act stipulates that schoolteachers can only be called to work for the decennial census. But in many states they are roped in to do other things.

The Haryana Schoolteachers Association likes to cite instances of teachers being called in to help with the stray dog count in Gurgaon and answering emergency phone numbers during the flood in Yamunanagar district, and election duty.

But a union representative said that if teachers refused to comply with what were illegal directives under the Right to Education Act, there was nothing the government could do. “It is up to teachers to make the choice,” he said. A block resource coordinator chipped in, “make no mistake, there are teachers who like the extra work because it gives them an excuse to stay out of school.”

It is true that in many parts of rural Haryana, schools have no electricity for several hours of the school day. Classrooms lack furniture, and very few schools have a staff room. Where a school head is able to build relations with the panchayat or the local business community, donations in kind fill some of these gaps.

But, in Bhiwani, Nirmal Dahiya, a former high school science teacher and rural school principal now an education administrator was having none of it. She told the gathered teachers to chew on “what wages you take home (starting at Rs 30,000 a month) and what a private school teacher takes home (between Rs 5,000 and Rs 15,000 a month)?”

Referring to the state’s school learning assessment survey, she said, “the numbers speak for themselves and there can be no justification for why so many children are not learning.”

A headmaster present concurred. He said, “I tell my teachers, teach, or you will be surplus.”

The poor at a disadvantage

In primary schools that set the academic fate of their students, some younger teachers said this is easier said than done. The syllabus, textbooks and learning material were of “too high a standard for government schools, they may work in a private school”, they said.

This is because children in private schools, usually have a year or two in pre-school but for the vast majority of today’s government school children in Haryana, Class 1 is their first experience in a classroom.

It is now acknowledged that the first five years of a child’s life are developmentally crucial, and not only in terms of nutrition. Between the ages of three and five, with the right stimulation, children acquire foundational motor and cognitive skills, like holding a pencil and drawing lines or associating an alphabet with its sound. A study by Ambedkar University’s Centre for early Childhood Education and Development found that, “One year of participation in even a low budget but good quality preschool programme significantly increased school readiness levels at age 5 and subsequent learning levels in grade 1.”

Monika Choudhary, a teacher at the primary school in Amritpur Kalan in Karnal district, said that it was “dishonest to compare government school children with private school children.”

She said her own daughter in a private nursery could already write. “But in our school in first standard we start by teaching children how to hold a pencil,” said Choudhary. “At the end of the first month we are required to hold a test that includes writing. How is that possible?”

She added: “In first standard they have not yet properly learnt numbers, but in the second standard they already have to do addition.”

Some Haryana’s teachers unions have called for pre-school classes or nursery classes in government schools. This has the smell of “more government jobs” about it, and does not fully explain why children from the same socio-economic background in some schools learn more than in other schools.

But it does not take away from the fact that poor children, with generally worse nutrition levels, are at a huge disadvantage when they arrive in school. There is nothing in the school system or in techniques teachers use that address their needs. They are expected to do the same things, in the same way and at the same pace as children from more well-off families who may or may not have attended preschool but are likely to have better educated mothers and come from homes with books and toys – which count towards preparing a child to learn in school.

Teachers trained for a government job?

As governments cast around for ways to fix the learning deficit and rapidly dropping enrolment in their schools, teachers are under enormous pressure. Even teachers unions are talking of having to “rise higher than zindabad-murdabad” and “treating the children like your own”. But, Deepak Goswami, general secretary of the State Primary teachers Union admitted, “most (teachers) think the union exists to protect teachers against the system.”

With very few exceptions, teachers interviewed for this story, had identical answers for why they chose teaching – a secure government job. Most women, including student and trainee teachers, said it was what their parents wanted. Deepak Goswami said that he was a teacher because “after 12th standard everyone was filling the DEd application form, so I also did.”

Sunil Goswami, who is a schoolmate of Deepak Goswami’s, said his reason for choosing primary school teaching was “certainty of a secure job”. Getting through the District Institute of Education and Training’s entrance test for the two year Diploma in Education after high school was easy and it cost only Rs 800 a year with the guarantee of a job. In the golden years before private BEd colleges mushroomed, the 3,000-odd trained teachers who graduated annually from the state’s 19-odd District Institutes of Education and Training were effectively guaranteed a job.

But the DEd programme does not really prepare teachers for the classroom. Student teachers in the District Institutes of Education and Training spend two years doing what educationist Vimala Ramachandran describes as “receiving and being tested on a vast amount of theoretical knowledge that is of little help in real classroom situations.”

In a journal article, Latika Gupta of Delhi University’s Central Institute for Education, described the District Institute of Education and Training as a dark dingy “factory” with poorly trained staff “…which produces hundreds of teachers every year without shaping attitudes and developing their skills.”

What should give anyone concerned with education pause is that these district training institutes are far better than the many private BEd colleges that certify most of the state’s teachers.

In Haryana teachers do not easily admit that there might be gaps in their knowledge or in their teaching skills. They told this reporter that they were “well qualified” and “trained”, and had cleared competitive entrance tests or selection tests. Asked if they felt the need for refresher courses, they were non-committal or said “no”. Many primary school teachers said that education department policy makers, who held them responsible for poor school results, had no idea what it was to teach in a government school. But they were unable to say what form of support they needed to help improve the situation. The answer to that question invariably came back to the student’s parents – that they were poor and disinterested.

To break out of this impasse needs a change in attitude. Teachers have to find ways to teach children who “don’t do homework”. Their challenge is to devise classroom practices and learning methods that factor in the social conditions of the majority of their children. Their education and professional training at present does not do this. The responsibility to prepare teachers for the classrooms they have, rather than ones they wish they had, lies with the government that employs them. As Haryana tries to fix its public school system, much will depend on how it trains its teachers.