Public schools in India are facing a dearth of teachers which makes quality education a far cry for children, says a study conducted by a child rights NGO. There is a shortage of more than five lakh teachers in elementary schools and 14 per cent of government secondary schools do not have the prescribed minimum of six teachers, the report says.

The study by Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) and Child Rights and You (CRY) found that across the six states, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh together account for more than 4.2 lakhs of vacant posts. Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra do fairly well in this regard, as they have recruitment in almost 95 per cent of the sanctioned posts at the elementary level.

Bihar has the highest proportion of untrained teachers, both at the elementary and secondary level, followed by West Bengal, says the study. As per the report, Bihar has 38.7 per cent professionally unqualified teachers at the elementary and 35.1 per cent at the secondary level. West Bengal, on the other hand, reported a shortfall of 31.4 per cent and 23.9 per cent of qualified teachers at the elementary and secondary levels, respectively.

Notwithstanding increased budgetary allocations for school education in many states, scarcity of duly qualified teachers and lack of proper school infrastructure are the major problems that still remain in place, mentioned the study.

Though the states have increased funding for school education in the 14th Finance Commission, states have not fully utilised their budgets to change the composition of their school education spending. This has led to a crunch in the allocation of resources, the study found.

Due to the dearth of qualified teachers, many states were compelled to recruit under-qualified and contractual teachers. The study was drafted on the basis of school education budgets for six states, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.