Problems in our primary education

Teacher absence was found to be less where a system of "daily incentives" to attend work existed. Teachers were less likely to be absent from schools that had been inspected recently; those that had better infrastructure and were close to a paved road.

From this op-ed by V. Jayanth in the Hindu today.

Here's something else that's interesting (and this quote is directly from the study [pdf, abstract] by the World Bank and Harvard):

We did not directly collect data on individual teacher salaries, but in every Indian State, salaries increase with education, experience and rank. Teachers with a college degree are 2 to 2.5 percentage points more likely to be absent.