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# Why Don’t India’s Best Graduates Want To Teach?
- URL: https://theinstitutionalist.jetri.com/why-dont-indias-best-graduates-want-to-teach/
- Published: 2026-10-21T05:36:42.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-30T12:48:36.000Z
- Description: Can school teaching become a career India's ambitious young people actively want, and does it need to win over toppers to get there?
- Author: Jetri Press Desk
- Tags: Jetri Dialogs

#### 

Ask a classroom of Indian schoolchildren what they want to be, and few will say teacher. Fewer still will hold on to that answer through college. School teaching is respected in principle and avoided in practice, often arrived at after other options close, through a B.Ed taken as a backup.

The profession doesn't lack applicants everywhere. Government teaching posts draw large numbers of candidates, mostly for the security they offer. Private schools, especially low-fee ones, struggle to keep good teachers at all. Somewhere between the secure job and the poorly paid one, the idea of school teaching as an ambitious career has gone missing.

The usual answer is to draw India's brightest graduates into schools, but that answer divides opinion. One view holds that teaching will improve only when it becomes selective enough to attract the ambitious. The other holds that a school system serving millions of children cannot rest on exceptional individuals, and must be built so that ordinary teachers do well.

Join us for Episode 12 of Jetri Dialogs as we bring together school leaders, policymakers, teacher educators, and practitioners to test both positions against what they have seen in Indian schools. 

### **Featuring:** 

- [Maya Menon](https://www.linkedin.com/in/maya-menon-b12468/?ref=theinstitutionalist.jetri.com), Director, The Teacher Foundation
- [Dr. Parth J Shah](https://www.linkedin.com/in/parthjshah/?ref=theinstitutionalist.jetri.com), Founder, Centre for Civil Society
- [Avnita Bir](https://www.linkedin.com/in/avnita-bir-91a9257/?ref=theinstitutionalist.jetri.com), Director Principal, Podar Education

📅 Thursday, October 29, 2026  
⏰ 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM IST  
📍 Live on Zoom