The idea of regulation in the Education has been generating
enough discussion for a very long period in India. CBSE, UGC, AICTE, NAAC and
similar authorities have been created with similar intentions by the government
of India. While these institutions have failed to deliver on several fronts one
aspect that has caught the largest share of attention in this regard is their
concern to regulate the quality and performance of teachers in educational
institutions.
Let me not hesitate in accepting a fact that teaching has
gradually been evolved as a profession from an era when it was considered primarily
as a mission. It is also true that teachers now demand favorable environment to
perform from an era when they looked only for an opportunity. And, it will also
not be a wrong assertion that teachers earlier used to command greater respect
in the society than they do in the recent age. Unfortunately, on the issue of
regulation, much of the deliberation takes place on how to regulate performance
of teachers while the desired stress to be given on the regulation of management
of the educational institution gets entirely overlooked. But here, I am
addressing the issue of regulation for the teachers.
There is no denying to the fact that in the modern age when
teaching is considered more as a profession one cannot escape from getting it
governed through some way of regulation. Teachers must be allowed to ask and
demand but they must also be answerable at the same time. Unfortunately,
attempts to put some kind of regulation for teaching have invariably been
proven to be counterproductive in the final analysis. The mechanism of API scores
has been the latest blunder. To force teachers to submit daily reports is another
idea that is equally bizarre. The idea of installing bio-metric attendance
system and similar attempts of peeping into the classrooms has similar dangers.
In fact, such practices encourage teachers to pay greater
attention on responding to these mechanisms of evaluation rather than making greater
efforts to improve their basic performance skills. More than offering an environment where poorly performing teachers could find reason to improve themselves these measures serve as spirit dampeners for better performing teachers and even hurt the sentiments of conscientious teachers – and that is hardly affordable. It is probably lesser
true for others but, in case of teachers, one must encourage the idea of
self-regulation to achieve desired results and improvement. Unfortunately,
teachers have shown little interest to put a system of regulation on their
own and therefore, out of all the possibilities, the next best option is to
get the performance of teachers evaluated by the students themselves. One can
think of putting a minimum number on the feedbacks if these are to be picked up for
extracting any meaningful statistical inference. One can also put a threshold
on the attendance of the students for making them eligible to submit a sensible feedback.
But, I see no alternative to this if we teachers would like to have respite from the mindless implementation of continuous counterproductive mechanisms in this regard.
