Abstract
It is well known that teachers are central to education reforms and to providing high-quality instruction. The National Curriculum Framework 2005 identifies the need for professionally qualified teachers and the need to enhance the professional identity of schoolteachers. Low-fee private schools are often presented as a solution to the supposedly poor quality of education provided by government schools. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the micro-managed context of teachers’ work in low-fee private schools in semi-urban Delhi. It illustrates ways in which curriculum and pedagogy were used to control teachers’ work and analyses these observations in the light of New Public Management discourses. This article argues that teachers strongly constructed their work as provisional and used silence and exit as a way to cope within the highly regulated work environments of the school.
Introduction
The Indian National Curriculum Framework (2005) (henceforth, NCF) projects teaching as a highly specialised profession and calls for teacher autonomy, while on the ground, we see teaching is considered a non-specialised and low-status job. Kumar (1991) has argued that this is rooted in the colonial intervention, which took away teachers’ autonomy and posed teaching as a clerical job with teachers losing control over the curriculum and pedagogy. He invoked the paradox of teacher personality with the metaphor of the ‘meek dictator’ where teachers were meek in front of the administrators but behaved like dictators in classrooms. The neoliberal regime is rapidly commercialising education as a commodity and has aggravated issues within the teaching profession. More than 40%of elementary school teachers in India belong to the private school sector (UDISE 2018-2019 1 ). Still, there is a shortage of information on the working conditions and nature of work of these teachers (Jha et al., 2020). Young women are prominent as teachers in these low-fee private (henceforth, LFP) schools. They work on insecure contracts with very low salaries and unregulated hours of work (Manjrekar, 2013). Studies on the impact of privatisation on teachers’ working conditions have been limited until recently (Singh, 2021). The lives and work of women teachers are being actively reshaped by neoliberal policy discourses and yet very little is known about how they are positioned within the school as paid employees (Manjrekar, 2013). This article examines the nature of women teachers’ work in a segment of LFP schools in semi-urban Delhi.
Using the New Public Management (henceforth, NPM) framework, this article shows how new organisational ecologies and institutional identities were being created in the everyday interactions of school staff at the LFP schools. Teachers’ narratives contrasted with how teachers are imagined in the NCF and the discourse of teaching as a profession (Tyler, 1964). It begins by laying out the new discursive regimes within which teachers’ work is being recalibrated. This is followed by a section that details the methodology and the field site. It then systematically elaborates on the aspects of teaching under surveillance, including control of curriculum and pedagogy. Teachers were positioned as ‘controlling systems’ for children and refrained from having relationships with children. This positioning of teachers induced silence and exit as a form of coping mechanism which in the interim reinforced the makeshift nature of teaching in these schools. Finally, the article reiterates the centrality of teachers in providing quality education and concludes by raising questions on the idea of teacher autonomy and support in the context of LFP schools.
In developing countries, LFP schools have seen a steady increase over the past two decades. Srivastava (2013) characterised these schools as being independently funded through low tuition fees and financially sustained by disadvantaged households (not necessarily the poorest and the most disadvantaged), independently managed and owned by a single owner or groups usually comprising family members. Härmä (2021) called these schools an ‘organic product’ of society directed towards the needs of the community. Other kinds of LFP schools developed as large chains and have international backing and support (like those discussed by Kamat et al., 2016 and Nambissan, 2012). These schools have roots in free market philosophy. A recent report (Acholla, 2021) divided these schools into four different types: those with an emerging single proprietor, those established by a single proprietor, those involved in a cooperative partnership model and finally those that develop as corporate chains. These school types vary across their operational scales, management and administration, revenue and expenditure, fee affordability and accountability mechanisms.
It is argued that these schools have emerged as a response to the failing government system and an increasing demand for English medium education (Härmä, 2021; Rose, 2002; Sarangapani, 2009; Srivastava 2006; Tooley & Dixon, 2006). In developing countries, the government system also faces challenges of first-generation learners, lack of teachers, lack of teacher preparation, monitoring, corruption and lack of accountability to the communities. In countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania, LFP schools emerged as a result of failed attempts to abolish the government school fees (Härmä, 2021). These institutions are often unregistered and therefore, unregulated by the state (Rose, 2002). In India, post-1990s, the expansion of the public school system indicated the increasing need for more well-trained teachers, thus signalling also the need for the state to bear more financial responsibilities. In this situation, contract teachers emerged as a solution (Govinda & Josephine, 2005). This brought the government school quality into question. Simultaneously, poor-quality teacher training colleges proliferated and remain unregulated till date, bringing teachers’ qualifications under scrutiny (Ramchand, 2020). LFP schools continue to grow as a response to the situation and studies are noticing an increasingly positive perception of parents regarding private schools as compared to the government ones (ASER, 2018).
Recent neoliberal policy shifts place an increasing significance on LFP schools as they are pitted as an efficient and cost-effective model of ‘good schooling’ against poor government schooling. These shifts favour market and private players’ involvement in provisioning of public services like education and prioritise ideas such as efficiency, accountability and value for money. There is yet little research to help us understand the teaching profession within this new institutional context. Scholars (Locatelli, 2018; Singh, 2021) have noted that the privatisation of education contributes to de-professionalisation, loss of status and poor working conditions of teachers. Teachers in the LFP schools earn far less as compared to teachers in the government schools (Härmä, 2021; Singh, 2021), their employment situations are uncertain, involving no benefits, and no healthcare support (Bhatta & Pherali, 2017; Härmä, 2021; Kamat et al., 2016). They lack training and work under demanding work contracts (EI & KNUT, 2016). Studies in other South Asian countries have also indicated a high turnover rate amongst women teachers (Afridi, 2018; Andrabi et al., 2018; Fennell, 2013; Nambisan, 2012; Ohara, 2013). This article is located within these broader discourses and contributes to the understanding of teachers’ work in a segment of LFP schools in semi-urban Delhi.
Changing Context of School Teachers’ Work in India
Following the global trend, India, too, witnessed a rapid emergence of LFP schools through the 1990s, which is reshaping the provisioning of school education in India. These broader shifts were coupled with inconsistencies in professionalising and strengthening teachers and teaching as a profession. This has led to a larger disparity in the quality of teaching-learning experiences in schools. Back in the 1960s, the Kothari Commission (MoE, 1966) noted the need to raise teacher remuneration, promotion, working conditions, pensions and other welfare services. It underlined the professional preparation of teachers as being crucial for the qualitative improvement of education and called for improvements in teacher training quality and continued professional development support to teachers throughout their careers. In the 1980s, the Chattopadhyay Committee Report (National Commission on Teachers, 1986) echoed many of these points and reasserted the need for teaching to be professionalised. More recently, the NEP (2020), reiterates the recommendations of these policies and calls for teacher empowerment and autonomy and ensuring that the best enters the teaching profession. Yet at the local level, teachers were made dispensable with schemes such as Shiksha Karmi (Rajasthan), Shiksha Mitr (Uttar Pradesh), Shikshan Sevak (Maharashtra), Vidya Sahayaka (Gujrat) that led to increasing de-professionalisation of school teaching. These practices normalised teacher appointment on contract and the role of local bodies in teacher management and employment of teachers with low qualifications (Govinda & Josephine, 2005).
Research on teachers has used several metaphors to define teacher identity and their relationship with students. In the international discourse, we see the ideas of the teacher as a technician or a reflective practitioner (Schön, 1987), the teacher as professional, as a transformative individual (Giroux, 2002). These ideas project the teacher as someone with authority and agency, capable of decision-making regarding teaching and curricular matters. The conceptualisation of the teacher as a Guru (Sarangapani, 2021) in the Indian context also praises the teacher as having decision-making authority over curricular matters within the classroom. The metaphor ‘meek dictator’ (Kumar, 1991) highlights the submissive parts of teachers being and offers a historical and cultural lens to position teachers’ work. More recently, framing of the teacher as a leader (Subramanian, 2020) and entrepreneur (Gupta, 2019) helps us to understand the effects of neoliberal forces on the teaching profession. Some scholars argue against teachers being docile to the neoliberal forces and argue that teachers try to make meaning of their changing demands and policy contexts, rather than simply obeying them (Chandran, 2020; Parul, 2019).
Contemporary discourses on teachers are constituted by the new discursive regime, including ideas of ‘outcome as quality’ and ‘efficiency and accountability’ (Sarangapani et al., 2018). The concept of efficiency has emerged from the World Bank’s conceptualisation of quality in terms of foundational literacy and numeracy in a cost-effective manner (Sarangapani & Winch, 2010). The public and private provisioning of education has been created as a sharp contrast to propel the idea of efficiency. Advocates of LFP schools have asserted the superiority of the teaching-learning process in terms of teachers’ presence and time on task indicators (Murlidharan & Kremer, 2007; Tooley & Dixon, 2006). The related idea of accountability focuses on the ‘unaccountability’ of teachers with regard to school processes such as teaching and learning, examinations, teachers’ presence in the school and so on. These ideas conceptualise teachers’ work as that of an ‘executive technician’ and not that of a professional (Winch, 2017). Such a ‘corporatised’ understanding of education (Batra, 2012) and quality of teacher accountability is contrary to the idea of quality as intrinsic to the process of education. A crucial dimension to this is added by scholars that call for the need for a feminist engagement with the education domain. Manjrekar (2013), for instance, strongly argues for a feminist understanding of the personal and professional lives of the women working in these schools in relation to social reproduction.
The NCF (2005: 107) observes that large-scale recruitment of para teachers has led to a dilution of teacher’s identity as professionals. In the way a learner requires freedom, space and flexibility, teachers also require the same. It calls for a need to support teachers in exercising choice with regard to matters of curriculum and their work with children. It calls for reforming internal school hierarchies by according more respect to the teacher and argues that ‘relationships between teachers and the heads and the principals must be informed by equality and mutual respect and decision making must be on the basis of dialogue and discussion’ (NCF, 2005: 98).
The NPM discourse increasingly argues that teacher efficiency can only be achieved by more and more managerial strategies instead of investing in strengthening teacher identities and professionalism. Higher attention is paid to outputs and performance rather than inputs (Ball & Youdell, 2007). Ball argues that this discourse is transforming identities of the teacher into a technician and the school head to that of a manager. This discourse redefines what teachers do and value. It reduces the complexity of teachers’ work to smaller breakable unconnected chunks that are to be transacted instead of looking at teaching as an organic, dialogical and context-based work. It is argued that teachers will work only if they are made accountable and their results are measured. Teachers’ empathetic knowledge about the context of the child, their relationship with the child and their ability to draw from their pedagogic practice are all being ignored in favour of a mechanistic view of teachers’ work. Teachers are marked with a lack of thinking and agency and teaching is thought of to be routine, ritualistic and mechanical (Sarangapani et al., 2018). In the Indian context, these new regimes worked well with the poorly performing government school system and teachers loaded with non-academic responsibilities.
Despite a significant number of schoolteachers being in the private sector, there is little evidence of teaching and learning employed in private schools, especially in LFP schools. There are a few research studies that enable us to make sense of the pedagogy employed within these schools. These studies have noted that schools catering to lower socioeconomic groups primarily rely on traditional instructional methods (Sankar & Linden, 2014; Sarangapani et al., 2018). Sarangapani et al. (2018) observed that teachers in small unrecognised schools were negligent and unpunctual. Latha’s study (2020) found that teachers in private schools felt that the school management did not value their professional judgement. They tried to fit into the predefined pedagogic culture of the school and used cultural metaphors to cope with the demands made by the school. Lall’s study (2000) is among the few studies that closely examined the quality of the teaching-learning process in these schools. She highlighted the monotonous pedagogy of these schools. Unlike the observations made by Tooley and Dixon (2006), she found that there was nothing beyond copying text from the blackboard and the textbooks had enormous amounts of homework. These pedagogical processes were facilitated by untrained teachers and managers at these schools who had high expectations to see the signs of learning English among children. Teachers worked under stress and corporal punishment was common. Lall (2000) argues that these schools were content with offering only minimalistic primary-level schooling despite the promise of good quality English medium education, which, she argues, is deeply unfair to disadvantaged students enrolled in these schools. She called for serious research and policy attention to this unregulated and powerful school sector in the interest of the rights of poor children.
Research Methodology and Setting
This article is based on year-long ethnographic fieldwork focused on the interface between the home and the school. The study was conducted in a town, Kasimpur, 2 located on the Delhi–Haryana border, about 20 km away from Central Delhi. In the past 20 years, the town experienced a significant growth of LFP schools.
There were close to 15 LFP schools in the town, 5 Delhi government schools and one high-fee-paying private school. 3 The ethnographic study focused on two private schools; Lovely Public School (LPS) and Uday Public School (UPS). The LPS was a primary school owned and run by a Baniya 4 family and UPS was an elementary school owned and run by a Jaat family. 5 Both schools were recognised by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and were established in the late 1980s. Most of the LFP schools in town were run by land-owning Jaats from the village with one exception (LPS) that was run by a Baniya family. The official principal of these schools were women from these families but it was largely their husbands who made the decisions. Women principals in both schools were college graduates. The LPS school principal’s husband, Balvinder, was also a college graduate and the Jaat school principal’s husband, Jitender, was a high school graduate. These schools catered to families belonging to lower social classes and castes or the migrant population of the town with the exception of a few educated elite families of the town. Most educated elites preferred to school their children in private schools outside the town.
Contact with the two LFP schools was established through a key informant with whom I met during the first month of my stay in the town. The schools further helped me get in touch with families. While selecting the families, I ensured to include different caste and religious groups residing in the town. Since this was an ethnography, the selection also depended on family’s/individuals’ willingness to participate. The interviews/conversations were conducted in Hindi, which is also my native language. The people on the field considered me an insider on account of me being from Delhi and a native Hindi speaker. However, my higher education background and professional credentials also led me to be seen as an educated outsider.
I made several visits to the two schools between 2011 and 2012. I attended classes, other school meetings and events and interacted with teachers and principals. The data in this article draws on my interactions with 14 teachers and 4 members of school management. These teachers taught classes from nursery to class 5. Except for one teacher, all teachers were below the age of 25 years (Table 1) and were employed with the school for not more than three years. None of them had a Bachelor of Education (BEd 6 ) degree. Seven of them had completed their undergraduate degree via distance learning. Two teachers had pursued their Junior Basic Training (JBT 7 ) and one had pursued Nursery Teacher Training (NTT) via distance learning. The other seven teachers were high school graduates. Some of these teachers were pursuing computer courses along with teaching. Matters of teacher salaries and contracts were kept highly confidential. However, during personal communications, teachers reported that their salaries were in the range of ₹1,800 to ₹5,000 8 per month. In other states of India too, LFP school teacher salaries are reported to be low (Carr-Hill & Sauerhaft, 2019; Kamat et. al., 2016; Sarangapani & Winch, 2010). It must also be mentioned here that the schools used books by private publishers. I took extensive field notes and recorded my interviews with the teachers and principals after taking their consent. There were several informal conversations too. I then used the MAX QDA software to organise my themes and analysed the emerging relationships and patterns from these sets of interviews.
Participants. 9
BEd: Bachelor of Education
MSc: Master of Science.
NTT: Nursery Teacher Training.
JBT: Junior Basic Training.
The location of the town and its rapidly changing education market symbolises several similar local contexts in India. Patterns regarding teachers’ working conditions resonate with observations made by other scholars (Harma 2021; Kamat et. al., 2016; Sarangapani 2021; Singh, 2021) in similar contexts.
Teaching Under Surveillance
Teaching in these schools took place under high surveillance. The school management held sole authority on teachers’ activities and aspects of curriculum and pedagogy. The UPS principal’s room was also a monitoring site for the CCTV cameras installed in all classrooms. Jitender, the school principal, observed that it helped control the teachers and maintain discipline in the school. If the teachers were seen talking to each other, they were reprimanded. The cameras were the ‘eye of the principal’ and were meant to micro-manage the behaviour of teachers and children.
It (the camera) helps ensure that they are not sitting idle but working with children. As a follow-up, I also make surprise visits to classrooms to ensure they are doing their work. Every time I encourage them (the teachers) to do better than each other. A little competition is good. In the monthly meetings, I provide feedback; there is no place for lousy teachers here. (Jitender, Principal, UPS school)
The principals articulated the need to keep a watch on teachers and keep them on their toes. These teachers were subjected to constant measurement and comparison. These observations echo what Ball and Youdell (2007) define as a ‘constant state of review’, redefining what they do and what their purposes are.
Furthermore, teachers were directly controlled and instructed by the school principal on aspects of pedagogy, correcting students’ notebooks, parent–teacher meetings and disciplining children. During my observations, there were several instances when teachers were rebuked in front of the children. School principals assumed correcting teachers’ behaviour and conduct to be their moral duty towards children.
The principals dictated to teachers how they should be ‘controlling the children’. Children were under close adult supervision all the time in both schools. The teachers and the children were required to be in the class even during lunchtime to ensure discipline. The teachers had to keep an eye on the children’s activities and interactions, all the time. They were required to strictly control permissions for water or toilet breaks given to the children. In the words of one of the teachers, they were required to be ‘satellites on the children’, controlling and managing every move. In both these private schools, the teacher–pupil interaction was highly controlled by the principal. Teachers were restrained from asking for personal details from children. Teachers were also not allowed to use any of her ways to discipline the child without seeking the principal’s permission. The principal was the only person entitled to discipline the child. In the case of ‘troublemaking’ children, the teacher was supposed to inform the principal. Students were to be taken to the principal’s room. Such practices ensured that he was fully familiar with the events inside a classroom and could address complaints that parents may bring with regard to the teacher, reducing their role to that of a mere assistant of the management. This surveillance of and through teachers defined the everyday working of the school.
Curricular and Pedagogic Control
By hook or by crook (Saam daam dand bhed
10
) we have to make the school work by all means, we have to make people work. (Jitender, Principal, UPS school)
School principals believed that since they were the permanent staff of the school, they had to ensure the best interest of the school and its children. It was essential to exercise such control and ‘make teachers work’ by using ‘saam daam dand bhed’ (by hook or by crook).
Research in the Indian context has shown the lack of autonomy among schoolteachers in deciding aspects related to curriculum and autonomy (Batra, 2005). It is well known that teachers hardly have any say in curricular decisions. The nature of pedagogic and curricular control within these school sites showed similar patterns but also emphasised new regimes of micro-management and regulation. Every action of the teacher was under the school management’s close supervision. The principal strictly controlled the weekly and daily lesson plans of teachers. Extensive efforts were made to plan these instruction processes and create synchrony between the events of two sections of the same class. Teachers from two sections were required to teach in exactly the same fashion, using precisely the same examples and explanations to maintain standards. Such practices are to be read in the light of larger ideologies of teacher control and accountability rooted in the NPM discourse. The complexity within which these schools worked also needs to be noted. The schools had to do their best to ensure teaching learning and to survive in the market. Low fees implied low teacher salaries, which meant appointment of underqualified and non-professional teachers. While schools may be justified in keeping underqualified teachers, doing so did impact the teaching in these schools and the profession itself.
Within the classroom, teachers only used the traditional methods and instructions approved by the school principals. Verbal explanation, repetition and diligent use of the blackboard were the dominant teaching method. If, for any reason, the principal was unavailable, the notebook of the previous year’s class monitor was used as a reliable artefact for conforming to the given instructions. Every year the notebook of the best student was preserved and changes to it could only be introduced after the sanction of the principal. Since the teachers had no formal training, they were limited in their capacity to think about and question what the principal dictated to them as the best practices or develop any teaching learning material by themselves.
He has experience of so many years; he definitely knows more than me. It is important that we pay attention to what he says and tells us. We are teaching only our class, but he oversees everything. (Ruhi, Teacher, LPS school)
The larger moral code of patriarchy also inhibited teachers from questioning the school principal. These experiences were also informed by their personal experiences of schooling, which shaped their respective teaching practices. This included extensive copying from the blackboard and corporal punishment as an essential tool for disciplining children (Iyer, 2013; Sarangapani, 2003).
Teachers were strictly instructed to check each and every word the students wrote in their notebooks. It had to be the replica of what the teacher had written on the blackboard. While correcting the notebooks, teachers were required to pay great attention to correcting the child’s spelling and handwriting by circling every wrong mistake in red ink.
Teachers were required to make an immense effort to get children to write in their notebooks. Children’s written work was used as an affidavit by the school to prove that learning was taking place and that they were providing high-quality education. Parents also relied on this written work to understand what was happening in the school. Children’s written work was also used as a yardstick to measure teacher performance, as is evident in the following excerpt:
If you want to know the level of teachers’ teaching, just have a look into the notebook of the students, the lesser the mistakes, the better the teacher is, as this implies that she has been teaching well. (Jitender, Principal, UPS school)
Teachers worked under immense pressure to correct children’s notebooks word by word daily. They were required to ensure that children erase those errors and correct them. Lesser spelling mistakes were considered as an indicator of efforts the teacher was making with her students. The principals inspected students’ notebooks during their surprise visits. In such a school ethos marked by extreme control on teachers and their pedagogic autonomy, teaching for deeper cognitive learning was markedly absent. Examinations were times of stress not only for students but also for the teachers. Through the process of examinations and the student’s performance, the teacher’s ‘real worth’ was estimated. A lot has been written about the ailing examination system in India (NCF, 2005) and how it affects children. But during my fieldwork, I observed that teachers also faced immense stress in these processes. This changing ethos of the school as an institution can be mapped onto the NPM discourse which frames teachers exclusively with reference to children’s performance. This discourse is reconstituting how teachers relate to and think about their work.
The teachers were selected and appointed with full knowledge of their lack of abilities in the English language. However, this lack of English was used as a pressure point to control teachers. The school textbooks were in English. Teachers taught in Hindi with the use of some basic English phrases. Teachers’ lack of proficiency in English was the soft nerve that school leadership would press if and when needed.
The analysis presented here shows how principals monitored the teachers and teachers themselves justified being dictated to on matters of pedagogy and curriculum. Teachers were constantly measured through the lens of student’s work and performance in exams.
Teaching to Secure Better Future Opportunities
Until I find something better, I will continue with this, no one leaves a good opportunity. (Meena, Teacher, UPS school)
In Kasimpur, these teachers largely viewed their work in LFP schools as a stop-gap arrangement till better opportunities came their way. These included more secure jobs in government schools, private schools outside the town, and clerical posts in Delhi government administrative departments or private offices. Concurrent to teaching, they also pursued their undergraduate degrees via distance learning and utilised their time to learn employable skills, like computers. The dynamics of town and city shaped the choices made by these women. The experience of being in a professional public space in the city was valued much more than the professional experiences within the town. While they prepared and waited for these better opportunities, the teaching job at LFP was an expedient arrangement. In the case of Uttar Pradesh, Härmä (2021) too observed that while teachers teach at the LFP schools, they continuously prepare for their entrance exams for government and other state jobs. Young unmarried women taught in the LFPs till their parents arranged their marriage. The low salaries and highly surveilled teaching environment made these teaching jobs unviable in the long term for young women. It remained, however, a ‘good entry option’ to the job market. However, some value was attached to the experience of teaching in these schools, as described in the words of Nita, from UPS.
When a child goes to a preschool, they are not learning any academic subjects. Still, they learn to be in the space school and how they should behave in formal spaces, including learning to talk to the teachers, follow the timetable, sit in a particular place, etc. For me, teaching in this school is like that. It’s an essential preparation. (Nita, Teacher, UPS school)
Nita compared her experience of teaching in the school with the experiences of pre-primary school children. In her opinion, just like a child learns to be in the formal school space during these initial years, for teachers working at LFP was about acquiring ways of comporting themselves within a formal professional space. These pertained to learning the ways of being in a traditional institutional space, including learning codes of authority and docility. The teachers knew that the schools would never pay them higher salaries due to their vulnerability and lack of educational qualifications. In this scenario, they developed a professional identity that was temporary. It worked well for the schools, as they saw these women as cheap labour. When asked about the four teachers who had left the school during the course of my fieldwork, Balvinder, the school principal of LPS, told me:
They are not here to stay, they come to us to get their basic training and experience and use this time to get prepared for better. As soon as they get anything better in the city they will leave. We invest in them, we have to keep them on track and also manage when they leave…it is me who will have to face the parents, these teachers can and will leave as and when a better opportunity emerges.
Other studies of LFP schools and teachers have observed severe teacher turnover and that teachers use jobs in LFP schools as a stop-gap arrangement for better career prospects. These teachers are invariably younger in age and have considerably fewer years of experience than the government schoolteachers (Härmä, 2021; Kamat et. al., 2016). It has been noted that teachers tend to leave one school immediately for a slight raise in salary (as small as ₹100/200) (Nambissan, 2012). Nasreen, a teacher, told me about two of her colleagues who left the school,
If you ask, other teachers will also tell you that working here allows you to work and prepare for other things. Kiran Madam was continuously prepared for interviews in a big school at the same time, she was practising her skills here. Komal, (another teacher) also grabbed a job in an office in Delhi. We are all teaching for the time being. (Nasreen, Teacher, LPS school)
When asked to elaborate on the nature of opportunity of these teachers, Nasreen mentioned a pay raise (₹500) and a job where one is less likely to get fired. When these teachers looked out of the profession, they did not necessarily seek teaching jobs in better scenarios but jobs with more security and salary.
During the little time they got with their colleagues, teachers recreated their interactions with the principal in the light of their temporary-ness in the school and created a counterculture amongst themselves. Teachers coped by making jokes about the school principal and exercising the choice to leave the school at the right time.
I know he (the school principal) doesn’t trust me. That’s why he keeps asking so many questions. I have to follow the school’s rules until I am here. I will do my best for the children till then and when it reaches a limit, then I will leave. I am not married to the school…there is so much work, that making jokes on the principal and laughing together is a way to cope with all this. (Kavita, Teacher, LPS school)
While teachers were working at these schools, they consistently sought better opportunities outside, but until they were at the school, they strategised their time by using silence to deal with these discursive regimes. The lack of trust and authority subsequently contributed to the contractual nature of teaching profession. Low trust and contractualisation are the typical chatter of employment in NPM discourse (Ball & Youdell, 2007).
Even in case of a difference of opinion with the school principal, they choose to stay silent and not raise objections. On probing further as to why such an approach was taken, they constantly justified their actions as ‘suitable in the given circumstances’. For instance, Priya shared her strong objection to the principal’s belief that all boys and girls in the school must address each other as brothers and sisters. When the principal announced this in the school assembly, the teacher did not object. Still, she later justified her silence as a ‘suitable response’ in the given circumstances. They choose to put on a performance and ‘present oneself’ (Goffman, 1959) to others in a way to control their responsive treatment of oneself. They consciously projected themselves as docile and in complete alignment with school principals’ folk theories. 11 These teachers strongly constructed their work identity as provisional and used silence and exit to cope with the demands of the managerial contexts of the school.
Conclusion
This article shows that teaching in LFP schools took place under high surveillance, and teachers considered their jobs as an option for the time being. Curriculum and pedagogy in the classrooms were stringently controlled by the school principals and their family members. While these teachers taught at LFP schools, they continuously sought better opportunities outside the school. School management faced the complex challenge of maintaining the staff as well as competing in the town’s education market. To run the school in the most cost-efficient manner and yet survive in the education market of the town, they had no choice but to appoint underqualified and inexperienced teachers who would agree to work on little salary. Their mistrust of teachers was justified on account of teachers being untrained and inexperienced.
This article has foregrounded that the LFP schools pose several constraints on teachers, offer low salaries, poor professional ethics, working conditions and do stringent monitoring of teachers’ work, pushing teachers to look outwards for better opportunities. However, teachers constantly negotiate with their situations. This article shows how teachers in this school used their silence and exit from the school/profession as a coping strategy. They treated their jobs at these schools as an essential stop-gap arrangement that prepared them for working elsewhere.
Thus, we notice that in the wake of the NPM discourse, there is a strategic deskilling and undervaluing of teaching profession. It must be noted that despite the high proportion of women working in the teaching profession and in LFP schools in particular, we have few accounts that illustrate the working condition of these teachers and the meaning they make out of it. This article contributes ethnographic evidences that help us understand the scenario of teacher work in LFP schools. It allows us to understand teachers’ work amidst the changes in the education system caused due to neoliberal forces.
As far as teaching is concerned, the LFP sector is working like an informal sector. The informality poses a wider question: on one hand, we have a policy that talks about teachers’ autonomy and agency, and on the other hand, in practice, it does not exist. If the teachers do not see themselves as teachers and want to leave the profession, what remains of it? If the policy has to be enacted in practice, then better standards and regulations have to be in place. Teachers working conditions in these schools are non-conducive for any form of agency. The analysis in this article shows that teaching is not a viable occupation for these young women, despite our policy wanting to make it so. In the emerging discourse of NPM, much attention and resources have shifted from systemic concerns of access and curriculum to concerns about teacher quality and teaching. There is much noise about teacher accountability within the public as well as private school segment; however, little but no attention is paid to ways in which the system itself is and should be accountable to teachers.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This article draws on my doctoral research conducted under the supervision of Professor Padma Sarangapani. I am immensely thankful for her continued guidance and support. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their detailed feedback on earlier drafts of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
