Context: Recently, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has  released its 2021 State of the Education Report (SOER) for India: “No Teachers, No Class”.
About the State of the Education Report (SOER) for India

• It is an annual flagship report of UNESCO New Delhi. So far, two editions have been released in the past and this is the third edition of the State of Education Report.
• The UNESCO analysed two data sets for the preparation of the report. These are the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE+) 2018-19 round and the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2018-19.

Key Findings
1) Lack of Teachers

• There are nearly 1.2 lakh single-teacher schools in the country of which an overwhelming 89% are in rural areas.
• The report projects that India needs 11.16 lakh additional teachers to meet the current shortfall.

2) Performance of States (Women Teachers)
Women make half of the teacher workforce: Half of India’s 9.43 million school teachers are women. 

• Tripura has the least number of women teachers, followed by Assam, Jharkhand and Rajasthan.
• Chandigarh leads the chart followed by Goa, Delhi, Kerala.

3) Increase in Number of Teachers in Private Sector

• The proportion of teachers employed in the private sector grew from 21% in 2013-14 to 35% in 2018-19.
• The Right to Education Act stipulates that the Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) should be 30:1 in classes 1-5 and 35:1 in higher grades.

4) Lack of Digital Infrastructure: The overall availability of computing devices (desktops or laptops) in schools is 22% for all India, with rural areas seeing much lower provisioning (18%) than urban areas (43%).

5) Low access to the Internet: Access to the internet in schools is 19% all over India - only 14% in rural areas compared to 42% in urban areas.
6) Increment in Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER)

• For elementary schools, it has increased from 81.6 in 2001 to 93.03 in 2018-19 and stands at 102.1 in 2019-2020.
• GER is the number of students enrolled in a given level of education, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the official school-age population corresponding to the same level of education.
• Overall retention is 74.6% for elementary education and 59.6% for secondary education in 2019-20.

Recommendations

• Increase the number of teachers and improve working conditions in North Eastern states, rural areas and 'aspirational districts'.
• Increase the number of physical education, music, art, vocational education, early childhood and special education teachers.
• Value the professional autonomy of teachers.
• Build teachers' career pathways.
• Provide teachers with meaningful Information and Communication Technology (ICT) training.
• Develop teaching governance through consultative processes, based on mutual accountability.