Bihar school teachers absent for ten months a year, says Unicef

In Bihar, a teacher barely spends two months of a year in classrooms as there is no mechanism for monitoring of teachers' performance.

The state has also more than three times the pupil-teacher ratio in primary schools at 122:1 compared to the national pupil-teacher ratio of 40:1.

Painting an extremely grim picture of all the three spheres - primary, secondary and higher education, the white paper on Bihar finances, which was tabled in the state Assembly on Monday, citing a UNICEF report, reveals that a teacher barely spends two months of a year in classrooms.

While there is no mechanism for the monitoring of teachers' performance, they are mostly involved in non-academic work, like government duty, which leads to poor attendance.

Another major factor is the huge shortage of classrooms.

Against the requirement of 3,79,089 classrooms, as per the national norm of 40 students per room, there are just 1,43,027 available- 1,99,014 less, the report says.

"All this reflects in poor results. In grade VIII exams in 2002, 76 and 86 per cent students received grade C or below in Mathematics and Hindi respectively," it points out.

Though there was some improvement in the quality of primary education due to the introduction of Bihar education project, district primary education project, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and mid-day meal schemes, the government could not execute most of the central schemes.

It failed to get the second installment of the grant in any year due to non-utilisation of funds.

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