Teacher Absenteeism Case Study

The PROBE restudy conducted in 2006 found that in the course of ten years many things had improved (i.e. enrolment, school infrastructure, school incentives, school meals etc.) but classroom activity had not (Shiva Kumar et al, 2009).

The high level of unauthorized teacher absenteeism. This has been ascribed to overcrowded classrooms, poor infrastructural facilities, unfilled vacancies, too many non-academic tasks to be completed etc.

Existing methods to deal with this problem are:

1. Supervision with cameras with date and time stamp:

The idea was tried in rural Udaipur because the attendance record of teachers was abysmal. 44 percent of the teachers were absent from school. After using this method the absenteeism from 44 percent came

The result gave teachers control over their income and good education to children but it does not motivate teachers to work properly.

2. Improve economic incentives:

-Increase teacher compensation:

Because of the less salaries of the teachers, they are forced to hold employment outside the schools which conflicted between their schools responsibilities and ultimately results in teacher absenteeism. Government found out the reason and thought their salary is not enough that’s what force them to hold supplement employment and decided to increase the salaries of the teachers which would restrict them to hold employment outside.

But this idea failed, the government here was much more interested in lowering cost than in lowering absenteeism. One of the reason that this idea failed was financial crisis, due to which the government started looking non-monetary strategies to the problem of teacher absenteeism. They were not able to commit resources that would respond to this situation. This system end up increasing divisiveness and alienation

3. Decentralise authority over

Strengthening school level supervision

- Create incentives and sanctions that can be applied to school level:

Actions like imposing fine, rewards for good performances, with holding salary were kept in the hands of headmaster. Due to late action, in giving rewards or punishments the impact disappears.

This also does not proved to be a good solution to solve this problem because headmaster was typically a member of the village and knows each teacher and his/ her family well. He tries to maintain good relationships rather than implementing the policy. The head master consciously shield teachers who practice absenteeism, due to cultural traits that exist among communities.

-Provide headmaster with better training:

To some extent, to avoid disagreement and argument with teachers, headmaster does not give much attention towards keeping good attendance record. For this head masters were trained and the training includes following things- (a) head master’s powers and responsibility to compliance with teacher attendance policies (b) methods to dealing with frequent reoccurrence of teachers in schools (c) the assets available to head masters to help in addressing