'Mess' doesn't even begin to describe Orissa’s education picture as it stands today. It is much more ominous than that. If there are students to learn, there aren’t teachers. Where ever there are teachers, they skip teaching. Even if there are students and teachers, there isn’t the environment suitable for learning. And, this has been going for years and years with no perceptible improvement.

Forget about some remote school in a tribal district, even a school in Bhubaneswar, Orissa’s capital city, has to manage with only two teachers for a student strength of three hundred! You said teacher-student ratio!! The condition is so unwieldy that children in at least six thousand villages and hamlets across the state have not seen the absentee- infected class rooms even though a full academic session is coming to a close in another three months time.But lack of teachers isn’t the only problem.This year students in the primary and upper primary schools in the state had to go without books.

Expectedly, teachers associations are angry. Parents are helpless. Yet the government is in a deep slumber. Just how the teacher unavailability could be worrying parents endlessly can be gauged from some bare statistics - about 35,000 primary and 20,000 upper primary schools in the state are running without teachers. 'There is an urgent need to fill up at least fifty thousand regular vacancies to save the education edifice from crumbling', says Abani Baral, the veteran teachers’ union leader.

What is more sickening is that in the face of a massive vacancy of teachers, the school and mass education department is unable to get its act together.Pratap Jena,the minister in charge of the department, is a helpless man ; for whatever he does is alleged to be upturned by his powerful IAS secretary. With both the minister and the secretary constantly at loggerheads even over such trivial matters like which colour will be suitable for the women teachers if they were to put on uniforms (teachers up to the high school level were recently asked by the education department to adhere to a particular dress code) and what will be the pallu look like, the children are the worst sufferers.

Orissa’s chief minister Naveen Patnaik may be a well-read socialite having his roots in the Doon School and one who speaks impeccable English (he has authored a couple of books also), but education - rather finding the right man for the job - hasn’t been a priority for the three successive governments he has been heading. This is proved by the fact that each of the ministers put in the charge school education in the past ten years have fielded controversies, voluntarily or otherwise. Lacking in a long-term vision and clearheadedness, the ministers have only tinkered with the system.

If schools in Orissa run dry of teachers, there is a top-heavy hierarchy of education administrators with too much of bureaucratic indecision, overflowing court cases and wanton political interference. For instance, the last recruitment of teachers happened in 1991.Ever since, there has been only a stop-gap arrangement by the department resulting in ad-hocism. Amusingly, there is any number of teacher- designations which would confuse even an ordinary soul – para-teachers, sikhshak sahayaks, siksha karmis, block-grant teachers and the like. And, this expansive nomenclature has not helped the situation. The scene is no better in secondary education either- with a couple of thousand vacancies still figuring on a 'no teacher' list.

‘We are trying to fill up all the vacant posts by the onset of the new academic session. At least 25,000 regular teachers will be on their jobs by next April’, says the minister. But Baral,the secretary of Orissa Federation of Teachers Unions isn’t convinced. Calling it a hoax, he says that the government will once again be recruiting teachers only on a temporary basis.

For this and sundry, the teachers are on a warpath. Come December 15, the teachers have threatened a stir in front of the state assembly - the immediate provocation being a letter purportedly written by the education secretary asking the Police Commissioner to prevent mass protest by the All Orissa Secondary Teachers Association (AOLSTA).

Elementary education in this backward state, also known for women trafficking and hunger deaths, which has taken a rear seat is almost a lost cause thanks to the malfunctioning of the Education Advisory Board –the apex body responsible for overseeing development,initiating change and monitoring the implementation of various education schemes and policies. Result? Around 32 lakh children in the age group of 6-14 are outside the formal school system adding to the sorry state of affairs. No reforms in teacher selection, no teacher traning, inadequate exposure of teachers to the new curriculum where,inter alia, girl students are supposed to, from now onwards, skip Maths. The list of deficiencies can go on and on. The upshot of all this is the pitiable results in government – run schools.

In contrast, privately-managed schools fare better. An interesting aspect in the elementary education is the emergence of Saraswati Sishu Mandirs(SSM). Students studying in these schools have in recent years thrown up surprising results – hiving off almost all the top ranks in the school certificate examination. Run by the RSS, the SSMs have been performing exceptionally well. Trends over the past seven years have shown that SSMs invariably do better than other schools in Orissa.

From a humble beginning in the late seventies, the march of the Sangh Parivar schools has wowed educationists and policy makers alike. There are about twelve thousand teachers in the eight hundred-odd schools who live no-frills life, teaching about two lakh students. And the number is only growing!

While critics rue at the saffronisation of little minds by the Sangh parivar, parents seem to be happy with the results. Meticulous planning and a perfect synergy between students, parents and teachers seem to be key for such phenomenal success. Though the teachers get lower salaries than their counterparts in government –run schools, their dedication for  the students is beyond reproach. For them teaching is a mission, livelihood comes only in the second place.

As part of its stringent evaluation system, each student has to appear in at least seven internal exams in an academic year. No wonder then that the students come off with flying colours. Educationists agree that the emotional commitment of the teachers is what makes them different from others. "In government schools, teachers teach just for the sake of it. But in Sishu Mandirs they attach a lot of ethical value to education", says DD Nath, IAS and a former president of Board of Secondary Education, Orissa.

Ironically, the RSS works on each student with the same zeal as Catholic-run schools. And like the missionary schools, the SSMs don’t depend on government grants. "We don’t get any monetary help from government. The students pay their fees ranging from 50 to 200 bucks depending on their capacity", says Gobinda Mohanty, organisational secretary of Siksha Vikas Samiti which runs the SSMs.

'Education Watch', a citizen’s initiative to improve the quality of elementary education in the state has come out with a report on basis of such varied parameters like infrastructure, learning climate,children- teachers perspectives and involvement of family and community at large. The report has some startling facts: the pupil-teacher ratio is higher than the norm (65:1), physical environment in 44 pc of schools is children-unfriendly and there is no teaching or learning material in most schools. Further,the report says, absence of meaningful activity and teacher-student rapport is affecting the learning climate. More worryingly, student attendance during afternoon was found to be substantially thin, once the mid-day meal is served.

Over-emphasis on textbook learning is yet another off-putting factor. Children viewed teachers to be 'angry and unsympathetic' and interaction, if there is one, is a matter of formal requirement rather than an enjoyable experience. The report further said that the teachers’ commitment and motivation for the job are affected by non-academic workload, lack of incentive for good work and administrative apathy. The report made a strong case for replacing the top-down model of planning for primary education by a bottom-up approach that would give both the teachers and the community a sense of ownership of the school system.

Reports, findings and studies like these are dime a dozen; but when it comes to implementation things are business as usual. Orissa is no exception to this thumb rule.