Sanjay P Sawant Dessai
As per Education statistics 2016-17 published by Directorate of Education there are 1181 primary schools in Goa for imparting education to from 1st to 4th standard.
There are total numbers of 96,467 students studying at primary level and total 4,017 teachers were appointed to teach these students and Teacher-pupil ratio calculated by Directorate of Education based on this works out to be 1:24. This ratio looks ideal, but when we look at the detail break-up based on the number of schools and the minimum number of teachers required at each school shows there is a shortage of almost 1400 teachers alone in Government primary schools.
Out of the 1181 primary schools, there are 781 Government primary schools, and there are 22,055 students studying in these schools with 1,711 teachers available for imparting education to these many numbers of students.
Ideally teacher-pupil ratio should be calculated considering minimum 4 teachers for every school as there are 4 classes from 1st standard to 4th standard and at each standard there are 4 subjects to be taught in each standard (English, maths, social science and language) considering this there is need of minimum of 4 teachers for every school.
The total number of working government primary schools in Goa for the academic year 2016-17 were 781, considering 4 teachers per school, there was a requirement of total 3,124 teachers to keep all classes engaged independently all the time, but as per government statistics, Govt had appointed only 1711 teaches to teach in these 781 schools which shows there was a shortfall of total 1,444 teachers.
Government is also facing the problem of space constraint in many schools as many school buildings are run in only 2 rooms, teaching all 4 classes, this can be resolved by merging closeby schools.
Primary education is the foundation of teaching-learning process and to improve the quality of education in Goa government need to provide a minimum number of teachers to upgrade the quality of primary education in Goa.
