Abstract:-
This paper examines the widespread perception in India that the country has an acute shortage of one million teachers in public elementary schools, a view repeated in India’s National Education Policy 2020. Our analysis of government’s DISE data shows that the median number of enrolled pupils in India’s 1.03 million public elementary schools is a mere 63 pupils, and that many tiny schools have surplus teachers. Adjusting those against the number of teacher vacancies yields a net deficit of only a quarter million teachers. Secondly, removing fake student enrolments converts this net deficit into a net surplus of about one hundred thousand teachers. Thirdly, we show that if government does its promised fresh recruitment to fill the supposed one-million teacher vacancies, the already modest mean pupil-teacher-ratio of 25.1 would fall to 19.9, permanently increasing fiscal cost by USD 8.7 billion per year in 2019-20 prices, which is higher than the individual GDPs of 50 poorest countries that year. The paper highlights the importance of evidence-based policies on minimum viable school-size, teacher-allocation norms, permissible maximum pupil teacher ratios, and teacher deployment.