Jamshedpur, Nov. 9: Jharkhand has made it to the top in a World Bank report.
According to the report on ?Teachers? Absenteeism in India?, recently handed over to the state government, Jharkhand, with 39.3 per cent, tops the list in the country as far as the absenteeism rate of teachers in government schools goes.
Even Bihar has done better with 38.3 per cent. The lowest absenteeism rate is in Maharashtra (14.5 per cent), followed by Madhya Pradesh (16.5 per cent). The country?s average was put at 24.5 per cent by the report.
Officials in the state education department said the World Bank report was based on a survey conducted last year in 200 districts in 20 states across the country including Jharkhand, Bihar, Punjab, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Rajasthan, Haryana, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. Ten districts were selected from each of the states for the survey.
Altogether, 3,750 government primary, middle and high schools were covered during the survey. Two agencies, based at New Delhi and Hyderabad, were also involved in the survey. In Jharkhand, over 250 primary, middle and high schools in districts like West Singhbhum, Chatra, Palamau, Hazaribagh, Palamau, Koderma, Latehar and Seraikela-Kharswan were chosen for the survey. In some places it was found that teachers did not attend school as they were engaged in other work, like running their own business or contract firms while in some remote areas of Chatra and Palamau districts it was found that the high absenteeism rate was due to the fact that teachers had to travel a minimum distance of 15 km to reach their schools.
The report pointed out that at some places teachers were involved in ?sub-letting? their work. Instead of attending schools themselves, they appointed others to do the job for them.
Director of primary education S.S. Sharma said, concerned by the World Bank report, the state human resource development department has started taking initiatives to check absenteeism in government schools.
