4 Teachers for 1500 Students in an Uttar Pradesh Government School
Channel: VideoVolunteers
Date: 13/05/2014

VV-PACS Correspondent Sanjay Kumar reports from Maharaj Ganj, Uttar Pradesh regarding the lack of adequate education for girls in the Government Inter-College Nautanawa.  He says that the government is not doing its job to provide enough trained teachers to teach the students.  Currently only four teachers teach 1500 girls who study here.  With such limitations only Hindi and English can be taught and other subjects like Mathematics cannot be taught to the students.  The Principal Sulekha Tripathi agrees that children are not getting the benefit of free state education and that there are currently no teachers for the primary or junior level.  She says:

"Despite our best efforts, we cannot give the girls the education they deserve... We'd benefit so much with more teachers because currently one teacher takes up to 5 classes!"

Sanjay Kumar requests that you put pressure on the authorities.  Only with your cohesive support can these girls receive the teachers and teaching they deserve.

Please call Soumya Agarwal, District Magistrate, Maharajganj, Uttar Pradesh on 05522222206 now.

Request him to investigate the reasons for the lack of qualified teachers in the school given that only four teachers teach 1500 students daily.

The Indian constitution declared that the state must provide education to all its citizens. India being signatory to a number of international covenants such as the Jomtien declaration, UNCRC, MDG goals, Dakar declaration SAARC SDG charter for children means that it is binding on its commitment for making education a reality for all children. On 1st April 2010 the Indian government implemented the Right to Education Act to provide free and compulsory education to all children from the ages of 6-14 years. Video Volunteers' Community Correspondents have been documenting how the law has been implemented in the country in our campaign 'Pass Ya Fail?'. One of our key findings so far has been the lack of adequate teachers in schools.

India has a shortage of approximately 689,000 primary teachers according to the Minister of State, Human Resource Development, D. Purandeshwari.  In Uttar Pradesh, there is a shortage of 39,000 at the primary level while in the neighbouring state Bihar it is 220,000. 

http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/rte-s-elementary-problem-lack-of-trained-teachers-for-class-i-to-v/809179/.

Girls have a far lower literacy rate than boys 65.5% to 82.2% and indeed many drop out due to pressures from a patriarchal society.  By looking at states we can deduce that Kerala has the highest female literacy rate of 86% whereas states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are at around 55-60%.  More shockingly the rural state of Rajasthan has a female literacy rate of less that 12%
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/india_statistics.html

In this context it is even more important for us to support the efforts of the teachers in Nautanwa to provide quality education for these 1500 girls. Please Call the District Magistrate and make sure she appoints more teachers to the Government Inter-College immediately.

About the Partnership: The Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) Programme and Video Volunteers have come together to create the Community Correspondents Network. The videos generated by the network will be able to highlight voices from the margins, providing skills to social communicators to provide advocacy tools to community based organisations.

Written by Manjinder Singh Sidhu