Teachers are considered to be the primary actors of quality education, since they are the key players in a classroom. In Nepal, education is highly influenced by Vedic traditions which give the highest respect to a teacher—the Guru. “Guru Brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru Devo Maheshwara” is a famous Vedic quotation which means that Guru is the supreme reality. According to J.D. Salinger, “You can’t stop a teacher when they want to do something.
They just do it”. But education in Nepal puts a question mark over this statement, because more than 50 percent of our students fail in SLC examination, while data shows that only 15 percent of the total children enrolled in grade one reach grade 10; the remaining 85 percent are tagged “failed children”. There can be no excuse for tagging the majority of children “failed”; it is the human right of these children to continue their education. If we follow these simple calculations, investment in education seems to be wasted in Nepal. Now, the million dollar question is, who is accountable for this deplorable failure of our education system?
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It is the duty of teachers to educate. They are morally responsible, as they are the most educated change agents of society. They are Gurus—persons who lead their learners from darkness to light. Also, in Nepal teaching is the largest employment sector with 222,562 teachers (166,071 in community schools and 56,491 in institutional schools), and teachers get the largest share of public money allocated for education. Hence, it is the teachers who are responsible and accountable for this failure.
In Nepal, the quantity of teachers seems more than enough, though quality remains problematic. Classrooms are reported to be crowded, teachers follow traditional chalk and talk approach, lack effective practice teaching methods, and there is high absenteeism among both students and teachers. The regularity of public school teachers has been questioned by experts. Many teachers come to school late, or give fake excuses for their absence while being involved in their personal business. The problems of ghost students, ghost teachers and ghost schools have to be addressed in Nepal. It has been said of teachers that they take part in trainings only as an opportunity to escape from classrooms, and also that they do not take any ownership of these teacher training programs later. These are serious blames put on Nepali teachers.
From time to time the Ministry of Education circulates a code of conduct for teachers, which is often not implemented. The Education Act 1971 clearly sets the following criteria to become a teacher: the candidate should be a Nepali citizen, has to have a teaching license and prescribed academic qualifications, and should not be an active member or election candidate of any political party. But in reality, there are many teachers who fight elections and are active in party politics. Teachers are often manipulated, indoctrinated by political parties, and used as political instruments. Furthermore, teachers are not united, because teachers’ unions, which are based on different political parties and their interests, are fragmented. On the one hand, political parties request teachers to focus in teaching-learning activities, while on the other, they use teachers as much as possible for their political interests. And on teachers’ part, they ignore teachers’ codes of conduct to seek power from elites. The source of power for teachers should be their performance or result, not external forces. These political cadres pretending to be teachers are detrimental to education.
The policies are silent on teachers’ accountability regarding students’ achievements, and weak policy enforcement is a major reason for poor professionalism in teachers. Ineffective teacher development program is another issue in Nepal. Many researches show that trained teachers are not making any difference in classrooms. NCED 2006 found that the application of training skills is considerably low.
Though teachers are blamed for being inefficient and unprofessional, there is no way to improve education other than by making teachers accountable, capable, efficient and effective. Various authors have presented various measures that can make teachers professional enough to provide significant contribution to quality education. If teachers are not capable, their capacity has to be developed by paying them more, giving them more opportunities to learn, motivating them and giving them high respect. If they are not accountable, they should be held accountable through proper monitoring, supervision and law/policy enforcement. Recruiting fresh, competent and energetic teachers based on meritocracy is a major way of making teachers accountable.
There are other ways to do so, including involving teachers in research, continuous professional development for them, restricting them from being involved in party politics, monitoring them based on SSRP defined quality parameters, linking quality teaching with career, and policy clarity (mainly in recruitment, placement, transfer and benefits). Increasing resources in teacher development, providing demand based effective capacity building programs, monitoring codes of conduct and ethics, and addressing the issue of corruption from macro (policy) to micro level are constant challenges for the government. It also needs to bring plans to replace old teachers by young, energetic, and capable teachers.
To make a difference in the classroom, teachers have to be researchers, learners, and innovators in class, and most importantly, fully accountable for the results of the education system. When teachers are professional, many schools achieve an almost 100 percent pass rate, despite many difficulties and challenges. If children fail to achieve the learning outcomes, the major share of responsibility has to be taken by the teachers.
The author is a PhD candidate in Kathmandu University, School of Education dhungana.rajkumar@gmail.com
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