The teaching profession is not like any other profession for it involves nurturing the future generations of the country. Therefore, teachers are the backbone of the education system and play an influential role in shaping young minds. But these are challenging in schools where their shortage is felt strongly and Tsamang Primary School (PS) in Monggar is one of them.
The school has been faced with a shortage of teachers since this May after one of the teachers went on six months of maternity leave. Another followed suit last month.
With this, the school currently has only five teachers tasked with teaching lessons for classes PP till six.
“The teacher shortage in our school occurred after two female teachers went on maternity leave. One of them went on leave from 15th of May this year. The district education sector provided with a substitute teacher. But she resigned after finding better employment opportunities,” said the Principal of Tsamang PS, Nima.
Some of them are taking almost 40 periods in a week, which is physically and mentally exhaustive for them but they are managing.
“We are facing a lot of challenges due to a teacher shortage in our school, especially this academic year. To fill the gap, we are overburdened. Usually, a teacher has to teach 25 to 30 periods in a week. But now we have to take 39 periods in a week,” pointed out one of the teachers, Rinzin Lhamo.
To address the problem, the school has adopted multi-grade teaching pedagogy for lower grades with less number of pupils.
In this teaching method, students of two different grades have to be merged in one classroom where a teacher teaches them as per their subjects.
“As an interim measure, teachers have adopted multi-grade teaching pedagogy for classes PP to two. We also ask the supporting staff to facilitate students in classroom learning,” added the principal.
But, since only the principal is trained in multi-grade teaching pedagogy, it is quite a challenge for the other four teachers to run classes under this teaching method.
“Since we lack training in taking multi-grade classes, teachers are also facing challenges in teaching in the classroom. For instance, class PP has six students and class two has 15 children. Their topics are also different. So when we have to teach different topics in different groups, managing the entire classroom is challenging for us,” said another teacher, Phub Lham.
However, students are hardest hit by the lack of adequate teachers.
“Our exams are approaching near, so we are worried about how well we can do our exams. In absence of teachers, some friends distract us when we do self-study. Since we don’t have a Math teacher, we are worried to fail in this subject,” complained one of the students, Kuenzang Tashi Loday.
Other students like Choki Lhamo have similar complaints.
“Without teachers, it is impossible to study well. We can’t clear our doubts.”
The school has already informed about the teacher crunch to the district education sector. The latter says substitute teachers will be arranged soon. Established in 1977, Tsamang Primary School has 97 students and is located more than 70 kilometres away from Monggar town.
According to the annual education statistics 2021, more than 300 teachers have left the profession last year.
Considering the high teacher attrition rate, people say it is high time the education ministry revisits retention programmes or comes up with more attractive packages to discourage teachers from leaving the profession.
Sonam Tshering, Monggar
Edited by Pema Lhaden
