One such pressing problem is the inability of some states — Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Manipur — to meet the teacher qualification norms written into the RTE: every school teacher must have either a bachelor’s degree in education, or a diploma. Naturally, these states must be given exemptions as soon as possible. West Bengal, Bihar and Orissa have already been granted exemptions, as they have never had such rules on the books, and compliance will take some time. In the government sector alone, India is short of seven lakh teachers; five lakh more teachers need to be appointed; and the number of untrained teachers is another seven lakh. Can we conceivably manage to train 20 lakh new teachers in the time we have available?
We must return, in this case, to whether such a rule made sense at all. While it could be argued that some teacher-training process is essential, is it necessary for the Union government to mandate exactly what the nature and duration of that training should be? That it requires an entire bachelor’s degree, for example, rather than a straightforward, hands-on training process? It can be argued with some justice that having sat through a bachelor’s degree in some other field does not mean that someone is capable of being a decent teacher. Yet, we still need not mandate an all-India, extra-high bar for prospective teachers to jump over. In the end, parents must be able to transparently judge the quality of teachers in prospective schools for their children. For what matters is the quality of teaching they receive, not the number of years their teacher spent in training. The RTE consistently focuses on inputs instead of accountability, and such problems are a consequence of that error.