Bihar India’s third most populous state is short of 280,000 teachers

It has more illiterate people–by proportion–of any Indian state, and although literacy rose 14.8 percentage points over a decade to 2011, there is a crisis in Bihar’s primary education system: Its classrooms are India’s most crowded and have the fewest teachers, yet India’s sixth poorest state spends the least money per student, according to an analysis of various government data.
Bihar has 37.3% fewer teachers than it needs in elementary school (grades I to VIII), and is short of 278,602 teachers, according to our analysis based on Right to Education (RTE) Act criteria, which stipulates a pupil teacher ratio (PTR)–the number of pupils per teacher–of 30:1 in primary schools (grades I to V) and 35:1 in upper primary school (grades VI to VIII).

Of six million teaching positions in government schools nationwide, about 900,000 elementary school teaching positions and 100,000 in secondary school—put together, a million—are vacant, as reported in December 2016, according to an answer given in the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament). Of these, at least 200,000 vacancies are in Bihar’s government elementary schools.
As the first part of this series observed, literacy rates and learning outcomes are some of the lowest in the BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states. By 2020, India will have the world’s largest working population–869 million–but an analysis of these four states–with 43.6% of India’s school-age population between the age of five and 14– revealed that India is unprepared to educate and train its young population.
Bihar is India’s third most populous state, with 99 million people; its literacy rate (61.8%) is the country’s lowest; and the female literacy rate (51.5%) second lowest, according to Census 2011. Bihar’s median age at 20 is India’s lowest; the Indian average is 26.6.

Reading levels in Bihar government primary schools declined over five years and improved in private schools, according to the Annual Status of Education Report–Trends Over Time Report (2006-14); not an encouraging sign, since 90% of all Bihar schools are run by the government.

Nearly 5% of children from Bihar aged six to 14 years are estimated to be out of school, according to this 2015 human resource development ministry education profile. Of those out of school, 55% children were never enrolled and 25% dropped out of school.

Of those in primary school, barely 85% made it to upper primary school in 2014-15, the third lowest proportion in India after Nagaland and Uttar Pradesh, according to Unified-District Information System For Education (U-DISE) data.
No more than 38% students enrolled in grade I complete their secondary education (grade X) in Bihar, according to the Bihar Economic Survey 2015-16.