schools, teachers and salaries

schools, teachers and salaries
It is difficult to see how things will have long term impact. But this awareness cannot stop us from making decisions that look sensible. Most decisions can always be modified in time. Very few cannot be changed. Salaries are one such and this landscape has always been navigated cautiously by private schools.
However the salaries in schools have not been free of the influence of the market forces. Today in the urban metropolis such as Chennai, salaries have gone up and continue to rise. Govt schools have upped the salaries as well. Schools are clear that they have to keep pace or perish. The question haunting schools is whether the upward increase in salaries and better facilities will actually also improve quality. While school administrators and managing committees are engaged with what constitutes quality, the most obvious definitions rise to the surface - cleaner appearances, computers, air conditioned offices, classrooms, audio visual aids, plastic cups and disposable plates and bottles etc. The quality of relatedness amongst staff and management, and among teachers and students, the actual learning and quality of education do not change much. The relationship between management and staff has tended to become more hierarchic if anything. The teachers having to use more child friendly methods have been diminished in stature as the tools for effective teaching have not been assimilated, internalized. Thus schools manifest two facets in this time of nerveracking change - heightened authority of the head and diminished authority of the teacher along with heightened autonomy and freedom for the student. While this trend may in itself not be a bad thing, combined wih the fact that salaries are going up, and few talented individuals come to school education, teacher quality is in a spiral. Schools are recruiting and being satisfied with traditionally successful teachers - these are better than the uncertain ones. But ironically this process just reinforces the authority model of edcation rather than a participativve engaged model of education. Just when control needs to be given up for more democratic processes, we find the authoritarian models gaining ascendance.

There seems to be only one way out - continuous staff education, followed up by pressure to reflect this training in the classrooms. Now this is likely to have low priority for most schools, simply because of the number of things on the crowded calendars of the schools. Thus it is likely to sporadically surface and bubble - a culture of ongoing change and movement is likely to be difficult to find.