English

Teacher transfers: equalizing deficits across schools

Theoretical Economics 2025-10-29 v2

Abstract

The Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act (2009) (RTE) of the Government of India prescribes student-teacher ratios for state-run schools. One method advocated by the Act to achieve its goals is the redeployment of teachers from surplus to deficit (in teacher strength) schools. We consider a model where teachers can either remain in their initially assigned schools or be transferred to a deficit school in their acceptable set. The planner's objective is specified in terms of the post-transfer deficit vector that can be achieved. We show that there exists a transfer whose post-transfer deficit vector Lorenz dominates all achievable post-transfer deficit vectors. We provide a two-stage algorithm to derive the Lorenz-dominant post-transfer deficit vector, and show that this algorithm is strategy-proof for teachers.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.18708,
  title  = {Teacher transfers: equalizing deficits across schools},
  author = {Debasis Mishra and Soumendu Sarkar and Arunava Sen and Jay Sethuraman and Sonal Yadav},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.18708},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T06:58:02.479Z