Re-imagining the teacher

Manzoor Ahmed
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ALMOST 2,500 years ago, Aristotle said, “Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.”

More recently, Jacques Barzun, the French-born American historian lamented, “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”

Teacher as a mentor only in nostalgia?
All of us can remember one or more teachers from our student days, who touched our lives in a special way, inspired us to aspire higher, served as a role model. The image of a teacher was of a scholar, who dispensed knowledge and wisdom selflessly to the younger generation, lived a simple life not anxious about material rewards, and could be looked upon as a mentor-a friend, philosopher and guide.

This nostalgic view is overdrawn, but bears a strong kernel of truth. Such an image would be seen as wholly romantic and entirely unrealistic in contemporary society.

Romanticism apart, teachers are still the custodians of the younger generation; responsible to equip future citizens, leaders, and workers with appropriate skills, knowledge and values. Teachers have a unique role in society, unlike any other occupation. The significance of this special role can be neglected only at grave peril to the society and its future.

The single largest occupational group
There are overall one million people in the country who are engaged in teaching some 40 million students at all stages of education in about 200,000 institutions of all types. These are big numbers, but not big enough for a nation of 150 million.

To bring the provisions for primary and secondary level education to an acceptable standard in terms of class size, teacher-student ratio, and sufficient learning time in school, the teaching force for these stages need to be doubled from the present number of approximately 750,000.

There is one teacher for 50 students in primary education; an acceptable ratio is no more than 30 students per teacher. Total learning time in a year in primary school is less than half of the international standard of a thousand hours. Ninety percent of the primary schools run in two shifts. There are widespread shortages of teachers for English, math and science for secondary schools; 50,000 teachers qualified in these subjects are needed to meet quality standards.

Teaching is the largest single occupational category for people with post secondary education in the country. More than a third of all college and university graduates in the country are employed in teaching. As noted, even a higher proportion needs to be in teaching, if the demands of the system in numbers and quality are to be met. This itself calls for comprehensive and coordinated human resource development policy, strategy and plan for the teaching profession.

The numbers needed are daunting. At present education and school authorities are often ready to take anybody with a certificate from an academic institution to fill the vacant positions. The level of remuneration, reward and social esteem for a teacher simply does not attract enough intellectually capable young people to the profession.

The quality deficits
Education Watch 2005, based on a nationwide sampling of secondary schools, reported:

- Fifty-seven percent of the teachers claiming a bachelor's level qualification either were placed in the third division or they did not take the final examination. Similarly, 39 percent of the teachers claiming HSC/alim qualification were either placed in the third division or did not sit for the final examination. The performance of teachers in public examinations indicates a low level of academic achievement of teachers at the secondary level.

- More than half of the secondary school teachers had no professional training. Thirty four percent of the secondary school teachers had the B. Ed. Degree and 2 percent had M. Ed; many of these degrees from a mushrooming number of private institutions of very low quality. The National University, charged with quality control of these institutions, has failed to do its job.

- Parents spent on average Tk 4,000 per year per secondary school student in private tutors' fees in addition to other educational costs.

- Two thirds of the graduate teachers studied humanities or the religion-based madrasa course (44 and 22 percent respectively) for their graduate degree. A fifth studied science, 8 percent studied commerce, and 6 percent social sciences leading to a mismatch of teachers and school subjects and a serious shortage of teachers in science, math and English.

The question of skills and aptitude for the delicate inter-personal relationship between children and adults that teaching requires, knowledge of the subject one is supposed to teach, and innate intellectual capabilities of a person are often given short shrift in order to put a teacher in front of students in the classroom.

Teaching, especially at the school level, is the last career choice of college/university graduates. In fact, few public or private university graduates look upon school-level teaching as a profession. Teachers in primary and secondary schools are drawn overwhelmingly from the colleges under the National University.

A Masters' or Honours degree from a public university unfortunately does not command the same credibility and confidence that it did in the past. Complaints are heard frequently from employers about a university graduate not being able to communicate adequately in writing or verbally in English or even in Bangla, not to speak of their depth of knowledge in their disciplines.

The teaching-learning conditions and practices are generally far worse in colleges, mainly because the standards prescribed by the National University regarding teachers and facilities including libraries, laboratories and classrooms are rarely enforced. Products from these colleges become the source of teaching personnel of schools, who then prepare students who are unfit either for tertiary education or the world of work, thus creating and perpetuating a vicious cycle.

The draft of the education policy underscores the importance of teachers' status, incentives and training. The policy looks upon teachers' recruitment, training, professional support and remuneration as critical elements of the strategy for improving quality in education. A Teacher Recruitment and Development Commission is proposed to be established to recruit teachers and support their professional development.

Attracting the brightest and the best
The ideas presented in the policy deserve support through specific actions which should find a place in the sixth plan. However, missing in the policy is a bold and creative move to address the central challenge to persuade academically capable and talented young people to take up teaching as a profession.

In spite of the fact that the large majority of tertiary education graduates go into the teaching profession, a system of pre-service professional preparation for teaching does not exist in Bangladesh. This lacuna offers the possibility of a new strategy to attract bright and talented young people into teaching.

An approach that can be followed is to offer education as a subject in the four-year general college degree programmme as pre-service preparation, as is done in many educationally advanced countries. The teacher has to be seen as the central figure in the strategy to improve educational quality. Bold measures are needed to attract talented and inspired young people to teaching, keep them in the profession and create a critical mass of talented teachers in the education system.

Education, with options for subject clusters, such as teaching languages and social sciences or teaching mathematics and science; and levels, such as primary or secondary teaching, can be a major along with a traditional discipline-based major in the degree programme. A student, fulfilling the requirements, would receive a BA or BS in a traditional humanities or science subject as well as a diploma in education.

A degree programme that embeds a preparation for teaching can be the way to attract bright students with a promise of stipend, subject to condition that they would serve at least five years in primary or secondary school. They can be promised a higher level of remuneration in recognition of their superior capability. They may be given additional incentives to serve in remote areas.

The incentives as stipends and higher remuneration would be amply justified on grounds of preparing well the potential members of an occupation which will absorb a huge proportion of the graduates. This measure would also serve the goal of social equity by offering capable young people from poorer families to receive good quality higher education.

With the development and expansion of digital technologies and connectivity, and the Digital Bangladesh initiatives, new opportunities have opened up for enriching the initial professional training of teachers and strengthening on-going professional development. Teachers of the future have no choice but to be technology savvy. Teachers' professional development will involve extensive use of technology in three ways:

- A delivery system providing teachers with information to improve pedagogy and content mastery,

- An area of study that develops teachers' abilities to use specific tools, including computers, and

- A catalyst for new forms of teaching and learning, such as inquiry-based learning, collaborative learning, and other forms of learner-centered pedagogy.

One essential condition for success of this initiative would be to ensure that the selected colleges for this project are supported to maintain acceptable quality in facilities and instruction. These colleges have to be equipped with the necessary ICT provisions.

Justified and affordable
A ten-year plan involving a hundred degree colleges for enrolling bright young people in a degree programme with education as a subject can be a key pre-service programme for future teachers. A hundred colleges under such a project producing at least 10,000 teacher candidates each year (after the initial four years) over a decade would create a nucleus of high quality and enthusiastic teachers in primary and secondary schools in the country.

An added benefit would be to set a standard and demonstrate a model for improving college education, where three-quarters of the tertiary education students go and where they are served very poorly in terms of educational outcomes.

Eventually, the existing primary and secondary teacher training institutions can concentrate on much needed continuous in-service training of teachers. Currently employed teachers also can be encouraged to develop themselves professionally and demonstrate their motivation and performance and be inducted into the national education service corps and rewarded accordingly.

The success of other quality initiatives such as transforming pedagogy, making continuous and summative learning assessment and examinations more meaningful, and turning teachers into role models for young people will depend on attracting talented and motivated people into teaching.

Can this be afforded? Roughly 2 percent of GDP, an amount of Taka 11,000 crores, have been allocated for education and technology in 2009-10 budget. This is one of the lowest rates of investment in the world, even among the least developed countries. The education policy draft and civil society at large have made the case for a major increase in educational investment, aiming to double it in the medium term of about five years and reaching eventually the generally agreed international EFA goal of at least 6 percent of GDP.

A major part of the increased investment will have to be in teachers. Two-thirds of the current year's recurrent expenditure in education of Taka 7,000 crores is meant for teacher's salary including MPO spending.

The plan for designing a new pre-service education programme including incentives, improvement of degree colleges and the enhanced remunerations for the graduates taken into the national teaching service corps can be implemented with an average annual expenditure of Tk 1,000 crores over the next ten years.

This amount will be a small fraction, in the order of 5 percent of additional educational spending from increased education budgets. The presumption of course is that the government will make a genuine effort to raise public education spending to 4 to 4.5 percent by 2015. The real question is - can we afford not to take such an initiative and not to invest this amount in teachers and education quality?

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The author is Senior Adviser, Institute of Educational Development, BRAC University.