In the media

The Madras High Court had asked district educational officers to keep a separate record of the asset details of the teachers working in the state’s public school. All teachers could buy new properties and vehicles only after permission from the government. In addition, in order to ensure the teachers are on time, a biometric attendance system was introduced for all teaching and non-teaching staff.

The standard bribe demanded by officials for a teacher transfer in India is around Rs 1-2 lakh. Nevertheless, the government has developed a transparent online transfer policy for schoolteachers. A smartphone or computer, internet access and the teachers’ answers to around 10 queries will now decide the fate of teachers’ transfer requests. This new system is also designed to address the problem of job dissatisfaction and teacher absenteeism.

The Madras High Court stressed the need for vigilance and anti-corruption departments to investigate details on properties of teaching and non-teaching staff in government schools. Teachers were observed to be increasingly negligent and undisciplined; they are not attending school in time and leaving before school hours. They are also involved in ’’various other activities unconnected with their teaching profession even in the schools’’.

A Guwahati-based private company employee paid Rs 80,000 to a relative of his who works in the Directorate of Elementary Education to get his wife transferred to Guwahati. On the other hand, a female lower primary school teacher who holds a permanent job and works in a different school has been tired of applying for her transfer to Guwahati for the last five years through the legal process while her transfer remains pending. According to a secondary school teacher, any transfer request is processed in Guwahati only after paying bribes.

Following a visit to six primary and secondary schools in Chattogram, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) found most of the teachers absent. The anti-corruption watchdog sent recommendation letters urging the Ministry of education to initiate a ‘crash program’ in order to bring discipline in the entire education system. ACC also asked the Ministry of education to take emergency steps to suppress irregularities, corruption, and mismanagement in the education sector.

Student researchers found guilty of plagiarism may lose their registration and teachers could lose their jobs as the HRD ministry approved new regulations on plagiarism drafted by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in New Delhi. In March this year, the UGC had approved the regulations prescribing graded punishment for plagiarism. In case the similarities are between 40% and 60%, students will be banned from submitting a revised paper for one year. A student's registration for a programme will be cancelled if the similarities are above 60%

The teacher-student ratio, a measure of quality of education, which is already abysmal at 1:21, is set to worsen after the discovery that nearly a tenth of teachers employed in higher education turned out to be ghost teachers. Around 130,000 teachers were found to be fake. India has about 1.4 million teachers in colleges and universities. While the good news is that this will lead to a focus on improving the quality of teaching, the bad news is that the country has just found out that understaffing in higher education institutes is far greater than what has been estimated so far.