Bihar schools have worst student-teacher ratio, followed by Delhi: HRD

Schools in Bihar have the fewest teachers per student with a pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) of 38, followed by Delhi at 35, while Sikkim has the best student-teacher ratio at four, according to HRD Ministry officials.

The Right To Education Act, 2009 in its schedule has laid down pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) for both primary and upper primary schools. At primary level, the PTR norm is 30:1 and at the upper primary level it is 35:1.

"In upper primary schools, Bihar has a PTR of 39 while Delhi has 34. In primary schools, the PTR is 38 and 35 for Bihar and Delhi, respectively," a senior HRD Ministry official said.

Bihar has highest percentage of schools with adverse PTR followed by Jharkhand.

"Bihar has 67.94 primary schools with adverse PTR, while 77.86 upper primary schools have adverse ratio of students and teachers," the official said.

"Jharkhand has 50.28 per cent primary schools and 64.24% upper primary schools have adverse PTR. Overall, 26.45% primary schools in the country and 31.07% upper primary schools in the country do not have appropriate student-teacher ratio," the official said.

The central government had launched an integrated scheme for school education, 'Samagra Shiksha', from 2018-19 which subsumes the erstwhile centrally sponsored schemes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) and Teacher Education (TE).

"Under Samagra Shiksha, the Centre provides assistance to the state governments and UTs for additional teachers to maintain appropriate pupil teacher ratio as per the prescribed norms for various levels of schooling. The central government has been consistently pursuing the matter of expeditious recruitment and redeployment of teachers with the states and UTs at various forums," the official added.