The Lack of a Voice for Private School Teachers in India

• In Event: How do Private School Teachers raise their voices against injustice? Case Studies from India and Pakistan

Proposal

This paper presentation examines the challenges faced by private school teachers in India, concerning their working conditions and their ability to articulate their concerns to school managements and governments. Despite being a significant workforce of over 3.3 million (UNESCO, 2021), largely in low-cost fee-paying schools, private school teachers in India often receive low pay and encounter difficult working conditions, with pay scales averaging below half of government school teachers (Bose, 2021). Private school managements exploit limited bargaining power of teachers in the commodified marketplace of education in an increasingly neoliberal landscape. Private school teachers often accept low pay due to an oversupply of candidates and low demand for their skills in other sectors (Chudgar & Sakamoto, 2021). However, the consequences of such low pay and challenging working conditions extend beyond individual teachers and negatively impact the overall education system, leading to poor learning outcomes for students.

This makes the role of teachers’ unions and associations all the more important, but existing literature primarily focuses on the influence wielded by public school teachers’ unions and associations (see, for example, Béteille et al., 2016). Media stories focus primarily on issues raised by government teachers’ associations. A few associations of private school teachers have emerged in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic including the Unaided School Teachers Association of Delhi (USTAD) and the All India Private Teachers’ Foundation (AIPTF) in Kerala. This study delves into this emerging landscape of private school teacher unions and associations.

Private school teachers resort to varying strategies to make their voices heard. At times, they collaborate with government school teachers’ unions. For instance, during the Covid-19 school closures, government school teachers' unions in Karnataka were requested to help private school teachers by contributing one day’s salary (Belur, 2020). They also work with their school managements and their associations when the interests of the teachers and school managements align. For example, the Registered Unaided Private Schools Management Association (RUPSA) has represented schools and teachers before governmental authorities.

Occasionally, private school teachers organize themselves against their managements to present their issues to the government, media, and courts. However, these attempts tend to be limited, fragmented, and ad hoc due to the lack of organizational structure and the powerful structural forces arrayed against them. Unequal power relations and the school management’s competing priorities render small-scale protests ineffective. However, the emergence of a few private school teachers’ associations have some potential to offset these challenges.

This study relies on interviews with private school teachers who have joined or formed unions and associations, as well as those who have not, to gain insight into the strategies used to overcome barriers and improve their working conditions. Understanding how public and private school teachers and their unions interact to address concerns can offer insights into the challenges and opportunities faced by private school teachers. The findings from this study can contribute to improving the conditions of private school teachers and enhancing quality in the private education sector.

Author

• Amogh Basavaraj, Florida State University