Low+pay%2C+long+hours%2C+little+respect+-+in+short%2C+teaching

Low+pay%2C+long+hours%2C+little+respect+-+in+short%2C+teaching

"Many private school managements engage teachers for salary far below industry standards."

"Teachers earn a lot lesser than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. Long hours, low pay, lack of support and decreasing levels of respect in society are pushing talent out of the profession. "The best talent from grad school doesn't come into the teaching line, because generally pay packages are low. We get the most average set of people who do their B Ed as an afterthought because they could not get into any of the other professional fields," said correspondent of Shree Niketan Matriculation School, P Vishnucharan.

He said that few schools can afford to pay their teachers well. As much as 50% to 60% of the school revenue goes into paying teacher salaries. But, schools are forced to pay a higher secondary mathematics teacher Rs 10,000 when we want to pay them Rs 30,000. "Over regulation of schools is making it difficult to meet these important expenses. In the process we lose good talent," Vishnucharan added.

In such a scenario, it's not hard to imagine a trainee teacher being asked to handle five classes a day with up to 50 students each. Add to this the increasing pressure that modern day school reforms like a Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation will place on the person. Throw in the fact that the curriculum in teacher training colleges hardly prepares the candidate for the challenges that she will face in a 21{+s} {+t} century classroom. For a candidate who has other options, this kind of pressure for such low pay doesn't make much sense. So, most eligible candidates quit within a few months, or just wait for a government job to put in their papers, choosing to leave their students as unfinished projects.

Experts say that practices in other countries could show the way. Educational consultant K R Maalathi suggests that we ape Finland. "There the government is seen recruiting top graduates to the profession, and then pay for their training. They have rewards, awards and get concessions. The government may have to do something similar so we can get good quality teachers." In South Korea an English teacher gets paid an equivalent salary of Rs 75,000 a month. Consequently, the attrition rate in South Korea is said to be 1% a year, while in Finlandit is 2% and bright graduates are only too happy to respond to the government's call for more teachers."