Idea of Self-Regulation

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.