Schools in various villages of Sandur taluk face lack of teachers leading to lack of attention on the students and affecting their right of quality education.
Batchu Rushali
The government schools in Yeshwanthnagar, Ankammahal, Kalingere, Mallapuram and Kamthur do not have sufficient number of teachers.
When the SoftCopy team talked to government school students in different villages, they complained that the teachers are not available in the class most of the time.
Parents believe that they cannot afford sending their children to private school and that is the reason why they prefer government schools.
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 in its Schedule lays down Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) for both primary and upper primary schools. At primary level, the PTR should be 30:1 and at the upper primary level, it should be 35:1. The Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) framework stipulates that the PTR at the secondary level should be 30:1.
Shivanna K, teacher at a Government Primary School inAnnakamahal, said, “The school is from first standard to fourth standard and the strength of the students is 447. But there are insufficient teachers if we look at the pupil-teacher ratio norms.There are only six permanent teachers and the rest eight teacherswill be here for few months.”
Shekhar Rajgouda N, another teacher at Government Primary School from Annakamahal added, “The workload of the teachers is comparatively more because alongside teaching, government also gives more work like preparing Aadhar card, voter Id, mid-day meal reports and other administrative works.”
The official reports from the Block Education office states that in the entire taluk, there are 175 schools, out of which 20 are high schools. The total number of teachers appointed for the primary schools are 1025, of which only 950 are available and out of these 950, only 680 are permanent. In high schools, out of 153 appointed teachers, only 93 are permanent.
A guest teacher at the government primary School said, “We guest teachers are temporary as we do not yet have qualification to become a teacher.”
She added, “The schools have lack of permanent teachers and that is why, to cover the gap and to keep up with the number ratio, they appoint temporary teachers.”
Due to lack of teachers and additional administrative work, several classes remain unattended.
Manoj D.A, an assistant professor in media studies, said, “Old teachers are retiring every year, but new teachers are not recruited on time. Since last ten years, people are preferring private schools over government ones.”
He further said, “The foundation is weak. There is need to focus on selection of teachers and also the screening process.”
