摘要：Teachers are the backbone of the education system that creates the most important knowledge source in society. Therefore, our schools must have high quality teachers because only enlightened, emancipated and empowered teachers can lead our society and the nation towards progress. In our school education system, the most critical component is the availability of sufficient number of qualified teachers. Shockingly, 36 per cent of all sanctioned teaching posts are vacant and among the recruited ones, 6.7 lakh teachers are professionally unqualified and untrained. Among this vast pool of the teachers, 45 per cent have not studied beyond the 12th grade. The professional competence can be gauzed from the fact that high percentage of 91 and 93 per cent of the teacher candidates could not qualify the National Teacher Eligibility Test conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education in 2009-10 and 2010-11, respectively. This problem has reached to such a situation because teacher recruitment in most states remained frozen for many years, leading to sub-optional solutions such as hiring para teachers with different nomenclature and lower salary to override fiscal constraints. President Pranab Mukherjee said India had a large proportion of young population and we should to harness its potential. If we fail to channelize their productive energies, it may visit us with terrible and negative consequences. Pointing out the vacancy of teachers in central universities was around 38 per cent. President said we cannot expect to impart quality education without teachers who are equipped to provide guidance to students.
