Primary education suffers from teacher shortage

Latest news reports show how education in government primary schools has an acute shortage of teaching staff as 50,000 posts of teachers have remained vacant for about five years. The news reports clarified how one in every three government primary schools, including newly nationalised schools, does not have a Head teacher, forcing assistant teachers to fill in also affecting academic activities. There are 63,000 government primary schools in the country with 3.19 lakh teachers and 1.47 crore students. Officials of the Primary Schools Association said that many schools run with only two teachers while the number of students are over 200 and Head teachers have a vital role to play in almost every activity in schools, including management of members of the staff, implementation of the academic calendar, monitoring of school discipline, co-curricular activities, daily schedule and the general atmosphere of the institutions.
Even though before it was merely a looming danger, as the years slowly passed, the lack of adequate teaching staff has left the public primary education sector in crisis. Due to the already small number of teachers available with no assistants to help them, it is only natural that the teachers in overcrowded classrooms will struggle to ensure that children obtain foundation skills when in school, which leads to many children not being able to do simple math, read or write. Apart from the reasons behind the shortage of teachers mentioned in the report, teachers are also often demotivated to teach at public primary schools due to poor working conditions, poor accommodation and living in remote areas where they are unable to access healthcare and other social amenities. This causes different (and sometimes unqualified) staff to try to fill in the shoes of main teachers and Heads to no avail, and the quality of education suffers significantly.
Throughout the years, this unfortunately has contributed to there being many young illiterate people who are unable to find a livelihood and thus become a burden for the economy (and nation) through no fault of their own. This teacher shortage is affecting all kinds of disadvantaged people in rural areas (many of them girls and the poor) which makes it essential for the government to do its utmost to provide teachers where they are needed the most. If this issue also falls in a cycle of corrupt bureaucracy and stays unaddressed, this will be a huge educational (and eventually economic) barrier that nation will not be able to overcome. Someone wise had said that ‘the quality of an education system is only as good as the quality of its teachers’. It is an agreed notion by all.
The government needs to stop messing about and address these deficits and take practical steps to meet the future demand. It is also important for the government and its recruitment bodies to ensure they attract the best candidates for the jobs available and have the capacity to train them. Bangladesh must start planning and implementing the plan to make up for the shortage of teaching staff so that the nation-builders of tomorrow do not have to suffer incessantly.