Private schools, especially in
India, have been facing a talent crunch for a long time now. Not only do they pay much lower salaries when compared to the other service sectors like IT and banking, the teachers are overworked and mostly do not have any opportunity to enhance their skills. Motivation is also low among teachers owing to all these. As a result there is a very high attrition rate so serious that the schools are forced to advertise many times over in a single academic year for the same position!
And since the teaching conditions are abundantly clear and the pay is pathetic, it’s becoming a Herculean task to attract even relatively inexperienced teachers!
Private schools, serious about quality at some point of time would be forced to look inward, ponder over and change their recruitment policies. So, is there a way they can attract the right talent and retain them? Is it possible to fool-proof the recruitment system in order to avoid teachers leaving midway through the academic year? Given below are some ideas. (Apart from giving a decent salary that is comparable to what they might earn if they’re employed in the outsourcing industry, the schools will have to focus their priorities on retaining talented teachers. So the school managements could opt for one of the two models listed below)
Model 1- Long Term Retention programme (Creating an in-house research and training team)
As this model states, this is only for those teachers who are willing to give a legal commitment for a longer period of time.
- A decent pay package.
- Compulsory end of year teacher-training at school’s cost.
- Determining the performance improvements after training and giving further incentives to successful teachers. (Keeping them happy)
- Collecting feedback from all trainees and evaluating it.
- Evaluating the benefits of the present training in the next academic session and making suitable changes to the next year’s training programme.
- Mentoring the performance of under-achieving teachers by the successful ones with promise of incentives over his/her protégé’s success.
- Continuously successful teachers to be considered as teacher trainers after 4–5 years.
Model 2- For those not willing to/not sure of committing themselves
- A decent pay package.
- Optional end of year teacher training programme to be paid for by the teacher (more in the nature of a security deposit than making money!)
- Reimbursing the training cost to all successful teachers with added incentives on par with successful teachers in Model1 in case they wish to stay.
- Reimbursing the training cost of under-achieving teachers if they wish to continue for the next academic year.
- Mentoring performance of under-achieving teachers by the successful ones with promise of incentives over his/her protégé’s success
- Continuously successful teachers to be considered as teacher trainers after year 4 or 5.
For this to work, the training sessions have to contain clearly quantifiable performance markers for teacher performance, one that comprehensively takes into account not only the teachers’ subject knowledge but also their teaching skills, evaluation skills et al. Well this is easier said than done. Therefore, the managements and the school heads have to make sure to find well-experienced teacher trainers.
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