LONDON: India ranks among the world’s top 10 countries when it comes to valuing its teaching workforce, according to a new 35-country global survey-based report.
‘Reading Between The Lines: What The World Really Thinks of Teachers’, released by the UK-based Varkey Foundation last week, found that India was sixth when it comes to people’s implicit, unconscious and automatic views on the status of teachers in the country.
The Implicit Teacher Status analysis, which finds China, Ghana, Singapore, Canada and Malaysia ahead of India, ranks countries by respondents’ automatic impressions of teachers when asked to indicate as quickly as possible whether, for example, they think teachers are trusted or untrusted, inspiring or uninspiring, caring or uncaring, intelligent or unintelligent, among other word associations.
“This report proves that respecting teachers isn’t only an important moral duty – it’s essential for a country’s educational outcomes,” said Sunny Varkey, Founder of the Varkey Foundation and the Global Teacher Prize.
“Since the coronavirus pandemic first emerged, we have seen 1.5 billion learners across the world impacted by school and university closures. In these unprecedented times, now more than ever it is necessary to do all we can to ensure young people throughout the world have access to a good teacher,” he said.
The report, which builds on the data gathered by the Global Teacher Status Index (GTSI) 2018 – a 35-country survey conducted from 1,000 representative respondents in each of the countries – confirms the link between teacher status and pupil attainment.
—PTI

Press Trust of India