Interestingly, the teachers were given the same exercise books that they normally correct after the students solve them. While it is known that many students of class 7 cannot not read and write properly, the shortcoming on the side of the teachers has perhaps exposed to some extent the origin of the problem.

The lid was blown off the competency level of the teachers when the city headquartered State Council for Educational Research (SCERT) had arranged a workshop for the teachers from April 25 to May 5, called ‘content enrichment programme’.

“The idea was to evaluate performance of the teachers,” said A. M. Bedge, direcor, SCERT.

The teachers however do not agree that they are all that bad. “We should have been given some more time to solve the exercise books. It is difficult to solve the whole exercise book of a class in a day,” said a teacher.

Another teacher who came up short said the conditions in which they were asked to do the exercise were not all that conducive for good performance.

“The classrooms were dirty. Benches were broken. In some centres teachers did not get proper food and water,” he said.

It is another matter that the students too are required to solve these problems in the same environment.

The teachers were asked to solve exercise books of

Mathematics and English, the subjects in which students often suffer at class 8, 9 and 10. The rulebook says that primary teachers (class 1 to class 7) should be able to teach all the subjects up to class 7, with specialised subject teaching starting only in class 8.

Thus, all the 1.25 lakh primary teachers across the state were involved in the ‘content enrichment programme’.

“It was found that most of them came up short while solving exercise books. Especially, they found it difficult to solve the questions of class 3 onwards,” said Bedge.