TOPIC: ENHANCING TEACHERS EFFECTIVENESS

Developing nations generally spend a fairly large component of their national budgets on education. Of that, a large proportion is spent on paying up teachers’ salaries. In Indian States, the share of teacher salaries in elementary education expenditure is estimated, on an average, to be 97 per cent (World Bank 1996).
In the prevailing economic crisis world over, most developing nations are forced to contain their public expenditure. Given this scenario, it is unlikely that most developing nations will be able to increase their educational budgets in the future. This leaves very little hope for any increase in the expenditure on teachers’ salaries, teacher numbers. At the same time, the requirement of teachers is going up. Several conditions are continuously impacting on the need for primary teachers e. g., increasing enrolments, retiring teachers etc. Notwithstanding the scarcity of funds to appoint additional teachers needed, any quality improvement will be only possible through more efficient use of the available resources – both human and physical. Teachers are the most important human resource in any educational programme. Therefore, the real challenge is to enhance teacher effectiveness without increasing costs.

TEACHER’S EFFECTIVENESS

To define and measure teacher effectiveness is a difficult task. To put it simply, one may say that what students learn is the basic “output” of schooling; the more students learn in a given time, the more “effective” is the teaching to which they have been exposed. In other words, it is the value added to learning due to implementation of the teaching process. Schooling is a composite phenomenon that would comprise of several dimensions. At a bare minimum level, schooling would require a building; some provision for seating children, drinking water, and sanitation