PANAJI
That over 200 schools in Goa have just one or at the most two teachers handling students in multiple classes is not a new discovery and has been highlighted either in media reports or proceedings in the Goa legislative assembly in the past.
What is, however, a very sorry state of affairs in Goa’s elementary education sector has got noticed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) which has reported that almost 16 per cent of Goa’s schools have just one teacher.
A UNESCO report said of Goa’s 1,486 schools, as many as 239 are single-teacher schools.
Titled 2021 State of the Education Report for India: No Teachers, No Class’ the report analysed the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) 2018-19 of the central government.
With sixteen per cent of their schools manned by a solitary teacher, Goa and Telengana are second to only Arunachal Pradesh which is worse off with 18 per cent of the schools in the State bordering China in the north-east listed as single-teacher institutions.
The UNESCO report also brings out that Goa’s teaching community is dominated by women. Nearly 80 per cent of Goa’s teachers are women, the report said.
