Teachers should be the best minds in the country,” observed Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, former President and scholar whose birthday we celebrate as Teacher’s Day. Today is the day to appreciate teachers’ selfless efforts, dedication and commitment to shaping the future of society.

A significant challenge that the nation faces, however, is attracting, motivating and retaining quality minds for this noble mission. NEP 2020 envisaged a plan to restructure the recruitment and induction of teachers into schools, their continuous development, career management and progression, and the environment and culture of schools. NEP 2020 also spelt out the strategy to initiate efficient HRM practices to motivate and energise capable faculty in higher education institutions.

While some initiatives have been taken in this direction, there is much more that needs to done.

The HRM system in education is in a nascent stage in India. Strategic HRM instruments can build a transparent hiring and talent management system, efficient performance management, continuous professional growth, a dynamic learning system and a responsive grievance redressal mechanism.

These are some of the concerns that need to be addressed:

Research and development: It is crucial to inculcate research curiosity among young talents at the school and college levels and, in turn, develop researchers’ ability to choose the right problem to research.

Indeed, institutions provide their best support for good ideas and innovative research, particularly those solving national and global problems. For example, research that led to Chandrayaan-3 was only possible with collaborative research and funding support from various agencies, including the government. At the same time, ensuring smooth funding grant processes and speeding up the procurement process is essential to meet the research project deadlines. Academics must promote a promising research agenda for collaborating with government, industry, startups, and investor partnerships. The industry should value PhD and contribute to the research agenda of education institutions; academia must reciprocate by fulfilling the industry’s research demands.

Tech and infra support: The infrastructure support should be upgraded with state-of-the-art technological infrastructure and the Industry 4.0 framework in today’s digital world.

Admin burden: A teacher’s primary responsibility is to deliver knowledge, mentor students, and do research. However, teachers are often burdened with unnecessary administrative tasks, especially in schools. The non-teaching staff should perform routine jobs while teaching and professional staff should perform only unavoidable administrative tasks, such as accreditation ranking framework duties and actively participate in management and the internal governance system.

Ad-hoc and contract appointments: Reports have identified severe problems with the working conditions and the compensation paid to ad-hoc teachers. It is essential to retain talents and keep them motivated with appropriate salary and other incentives at par with the regular employees.

Focused training programmes: Rigorous, intensive and regular training programmes should be imparted to teachers to equip them with the knowledge, tools and skills necessary to deal with students. Teachers should also receive training in learner-centric pedagogy and the latest technology. Leadership programmes are crucial to grooming principals, academic administrators and vice-chancellors.

To sum up, professionalisation, modernisation and digitisation are vital to educational institutions. Prioritising the NEP 2020 recommendations and appointing skilled and trained professionals will ease many challenges teachers face.

The writer is with IGIDR, Mumbai. Views expressed are personal.