We have enough trained teachers, but do we have enough skilled teachers? Training and skills do not mean the same thing. Teachers must immerse themselves deeply and with rapt attention to acquire skills in any subject.
They must be genuinely interested in learning it, which should be guided by internal motivation. A teacher must understand the subject’s ins and outs and possible related matters to satisfy their queries and make it more suitable and palatable to the students.
How students respond to the subject, how they are taking it, why they do not react as expected, where the weakness is, and what steps can address those are the ways of observation and research of the teachers. They can do these aspects in their classrooms and other teaching-learning situations.
However, these do not happen in the training sessions. Maybe a new theory or opinion of some researchers or educationists is shared theoretically with the trainees.
In some modern trainings, some demonstrations or micro-teaching sessions are also not genuine, as this situation is quite different from the real world of teachers, where they meet students of multiple types, with various calibres and behaviours.
Because of these reasons, teachers do not show any interest in receiving any training. So, external motivation has been added to the training programs. Now, teachers are also lured to accept only those trainings that offer monetary benefits and are devoid of internal motivation. They opt for training that offers direct monetary benefits.
As a result, the fundamental objective of the training remains elusive. If teachers are interested in learning something new and developing themselves professionally, they must not bother about any external motivation. Their internal motivation should lead them to undergo hardship to further establish their performance. That means there is no connection between trained teachers in the traditional sense of the term and truly changing students’ performance.
A daily newspaper survey recently shows we have enough trained teachers, but very few skilled teachers! The number of trained teachers has indeed increased at the secondary level, as substantiated by one statistic of BANBEIS, which shows that the number of trained teachers has risen by 5.86 per cent in 2023 compared to 2019.
Different research and reports clearly show that teachers receive training and certificates. Yet, they are far behind in achieving the required skills that clearly manifest in the students’ performance. We have teachers training colleges, NAEM, which have different projects, TQI, SEQAEP, SESDP, where teachers continue receiving training, but the development momentum still stands at the same point. What does it mean?
We see a visual change when an ordinary citizen receives training either in defence or any sector, but teachers receive training throughout their lives, and no such change is discerned. According to the BANBEIS report, trained teachers are meant to be the teachers with a BEd-MEd certificate. Bangladesh has 14 government Teachers’ Training Colleges and 90 Non-Government Teachers’ Training Colleges.
Besides, Bangladesh Open University provides BEd-MEd courses for teachers. JAICA conducted a survey and developed a report on the secondary education of Bangladesh in 2023 that shows the principal challenge of secondary education was low-quality teacher training. It was also reported that BOU introduced the B.Ed course, which runs only one online class a week, drawing many teachers to leave the regular B.Ed courses offered by other institutions.
That convinced all concerned that gaining a certificate is more important and easier than acquiring knowledge. It further reported that NAEM and HSTTI offer training, mostly education administration and management-based, and teaching subjects effectively does not happen here.
BANBEIS TTCs see 12 thousand 395 students; among them, in 14 government TTCs, the number of students is one thousand 463, even though these colleges have accommodations for seven thousand students. And in non-government TTCs, there are 9,419 seats for students.
Government TTCs say private TTCs offer degrees easily, which attracts teachers to receive their degrees from these institutions, ignoring government TTCs. Institutional heads also believe that the trained teachers receiving degrees from these institutions cannot perform well in the classrooms.
It can be compared with a situation where many spectators watch football or cricket, who always clap, encouraging the performances of the cricketers or footballers. They become familiar with different scoring techniques, such as how to make 4 or 6, but they never touch the football or cricket bat in their own hands.
This means that they become familiar with the different techniques of these two games, but are seriously poor or have zero skills to play football or cricket practically. The same thing is happening to our teachers. They receive training throughout their life and are fed with various information.
However, their real performance in teaching their respective subjects innovatively and interestingly to make students interested remains abysmal, as they are always spectators, not real players. If you want to learn cricket or football, you must take a cricket bat in your own hand or a football under your feet.
If you want to learn swimming, you must sink in a pond. That is not happening in any of our trainings. Training has become a big business! Training institutions are making a business with their own training. Various government projects run their training to make a business! What behaviour of the teachers has changed, what skills they have gained and whether they are using anything for their pupils are nobody’s concern.
Everybody’s concern is to complete the targeted training at any cost to burn the money. During the reign of the previous government, the so-called competency-based curriculum was introduced, and all the teachers were brought under a vast training program, which meant a bigger business!
As the classes were suspended and students, guardians and teachers were fumbling in the dark about what to do, they all went to the upazila and district venues to receive training. Almost every day, I talked to various trainers and master trainers and asked several questions. Many trainers answered, ‘ Sir, to speak the truth, the thing is still unclear. As we are instructed to continue the training, we are just doing it.’’ That was the reality, but who bothered?
Training has been made certificate-based. Suppose teachers can manage a BEd or MEd certificate. In that case, they are given a higher scale even though they are not skilled enough to deal with students effectively, go deep into the subject, and provide relevant and suitable examples to make something understandable and enjoyable to the students.
If someone can submit a certificate, they are given extra benefits, which is right, as there must be some incentives to receive such long-term training. We cannot, however, deny the truth that our training institutions cannot maintain quality at all. There is no system to prove the leaks.
So, teachers try to get the certificates without learning anything deeply and without doing any practice teaching. Mostly in private TTCs, this happens. When private TTCs do this practice, government ones should not lag in this race to get students!
It is conclusively suggested that while recruiting any teacher, their skills must be tested without depending only on their certificates. It will encourage them to gain skills, not only certificates. It is done in the private sector, but it seems complicated to implement in the government, as all want undue privileges to gain anything without undergoing hard labour.
If you press, they will block the streets to press home their illegal demands. No rule or discipline reigns nowadays. All seem to have surrendered to unreasonable and undue demands.
At least from the institution level, it must be introduced that the candidates should show a tangible demonstration that trained teachers needs to follow in the real classroom, and their several real classes need to be observed to learn how many practical skills they have acquired. If we rely on a piece of paper or certificates, it will further aggravate our system.
About the Author
Masum Billah works as a President of the English Teachers' Association of Bangladesh (ETAB), Dhaka, Bangladesh. He previously worked as an Education Specialist at BRAC, an international NGO in Bangladesh.