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Teachers change course for better pay

They Are Leaving Schools To Join Corporates, Banks, BPOs and Coaching Classes

Anahita Mukherji I TNN

Mumbai: There was a time when the average schoolteacher’s careerscape consisted of several decades in one school. Today, the attrition rate in academic jobs almost rivals that of the corporate world.
Teachers, even from the city’s top schools, are leaving in droves to join the host of so-called international schools that have entered the education market as well as corporates, banks, BPOs and coaching classes. “We have lost five teachers in the last year alone,’’ says Mona Seervai, principal of Bombay International School, an ICSE school at Babulnath. According to her, it is impossible to match the salaries international schools pay their teachers. “After all, our fees don’t run into lakhs,’’ she says.
ICSE schools often recruit freshly-minted graduates straight out of teacher training colleges, but most international schools prefer experienced teachers and hire them from ICSE institutes. “We’ve now become a training ground for international schools,’’ says Paul Machado, principal of Campion School in Cooperage, sardonically.
While most well-known ICSE schools have managed to replace the teachers who have left them, some have floundered. A year ago, scores of parents pulled their children out of Ryan International School in Malad because they alleged that the attrition rate among teachers was phenomenally high, with the result that students learnt little in the classroom.
A lucrative salary isn’t the only thing that pulls teachers out of ICSE schools and into the corporate sector or institutions run by the corporate sector. Teachers say that though coaching classes and international schools often require longer working hours, at the end of the day, the job satisfaction is a lot higher.
A hunger to “do his own thing in life’’ drove R Singh, a former teacher at Ryan International School (Malad) to quit the institution and set up his own coaching class.
For some, teaching in an international school happened by chance. After teaching the ICSE and ISC syllabus for 23 years, both in Mumbai and Kolkata, Sudeshna Sengupta quit her job at a south Mumbai ICSE school when she shifted to a home in the suburbs. She now teaches at Ecole Mondiale World School, an International Baccalaureate School in Juhu, where she loves her job. “The IB system is flexible and creative and teachers are not bound to the syllabus,’’ she says.
“Till Grade 8, teachers are allowed to choose the kind of textbooks they want to use. The subjects, too, are vastly different from what’s offered at regular schools. For instance, I’m currently teaching a subject called the ‘Theory of Knowledge’, where students question everything that they have learned and there are no wrong answers,’’ adds Sengupta.
Low salaries, high stress levels and little recognition for their worth are also driving teachers out of the profession altogether. For instance, Sandhya Shignan, a PT teacher at a well-known suburban ICSE school, is all set to quit teaching for a job as an advisor to ICICI. “I enjoy speaking to people, so the new job will definitely suit my personality,’’ she says. “Besides, teaching involves a great deal of stress.’’
Shignan isn’t the only one. With several teachers quitting the profession for a corporate job, schools are now witnessing an exodus.
anahita.mukherji@timesgroup.com