The government is grappling with an acute shortage of qualified teachers in government schools. The MHRD estimates 17.5% and 19% teacher vacancies in primary and secondary schools respectively. Even among the serving teachers, only 17% teachers in rural areas and 8.3% teachers in urban areas receive in-service training. And the training provided is often introductory, at the start of an academic year and is not supplemented by any aids, tools or follow-up mechanisms.
The Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan by the Government of India subsumes Teacher Education (TE) along with the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan(SSA) and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan(RMSA) but professional development for teachers cannot be a onetime activity. It needs to be continuous and a cookie cutter approach to teacher training will serve no purpose. Just like student needs are to be assessed, analyzing teachers training is evenly important.
Through Class Saathi, the Principal or School Administrator has real-timeaccess to the performance statistics of each teacher. This includes the analysis of each student’s learning outcomes through quizzes, attendance and behavior. This data allows them to understand the training and other support needs of each teacher.
Teachers can also be more invested in their professional development by soliciting regular feedback from students on various aspects of their teaching. This can be done easily using the poll functionality and gives teachers the required data to modify their instruction or seek support where required.
Teachers in government schools, apart from teaching duties, are constantly assigned official school and department administrative work. In fact, these additional tasks result in 6.8% teacher absenteeism in schools on a daily basis. The Class Saathi solution helps ease off the administrative work of teachers within the classroom. Teachers can take attendance swiftly and has all of this recorded per student on a daily, weekly, periodic basis.
This saves time and energy in manually marking attendance in the classroom and later entering it into a system for use in report cards. Assessments can be conducted on a daily basis using the quiz functionality without the teachers feeling the burden of checking student notebooks or test sheets for answers. The assessment results are available immediately and recorded against each student’s profile. With this savings in time and energy within and outside the classroom, teachers can focus on the most important and their primary role of teaching.
A good lesson is a one that has a clear objective, activation of any prior knowledge and a closure where students demonstrate what they have learned. Class Saathi allows both of these with ease. It also serves as the go-to toolkit for teachers to prepare for a class through the provision of digital content, practice questions and additional MCQs for assessment.
With all teachers in a school using Class Saathi, there is a uniformity in practices within the classroom. The Principal/Administrator is aware of the student and teacher progress in real time. With the Class Saathi parent app, parents are kept up-to date on their child’s progress and hence feel more involved in the learning of their child.
Thus, Class Saathi is the perfect tool for well engaged classes, well-crafted lessons and a well implemented school vision.
Class Saathi is the just the ‘Saathi’ every teacher needs!
