Shortage of teachers in Tarn Taran schools worries parents

DOWNFALL Last year, Tarn Taran was at number two among all districts of Punjab with 72.3 pass percentage in Class12 while the pass percentage was 31.6 this year

AS PER DATA, 50% POSTS OF TEACHERS IN GOVT SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND 40% IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS ARE LYING VACANT

AMRITSAR: After the Punjab School Education Board’s (PSEB)’s crackdown on mass copying during examinations this year, especially in Tarn Taran district, which led to the poor result of Class-12 examination, parents here are now worried over the huge shortage of teachers in the border district’s government schools.

Last year, Tarn Taran was at number two among all districts of Punjab with 72.3 pass percentage in Class-12 result while the result recorded 31.60% (a fall of over 41%) this year, bringing down its name to the bottom of the list among all districts of the state. The reason: shortage of staff and crackdown on cheating.

Parents of students of government schools are blaming the ‘poor policies’ of the education department, which has failed to fill the vacant posts of teachers.

As per the data collected from the education department around 50% posts of teachers are lying vacant in the district’s government secondary schools (from Classes 6 to 12). There are around 3,758 sanctioned posts of teachers, but only 1,879 are filled. The 70 schools of the district are running without headmasters as out of a total of 97 sanctioned posts only 27 are filled. Similarly, out of 539 sanctioned posts of lecturers, 224 are filled. There are 2,128 sanctioned posts of master cadre, but only 943 are filled. The situation is worse with regard to non-teaching staff.

The situation is also not good in elementary schools (Classes 1 to 5). As per the data, there are around 1,935 sanctioned posts of teachers in the district while only 1,182 are filled.

Tarn Taran district education office (DEO) of secondary education Nirmal Singh said they send a detailed report of shortage of staff every year to the head office in Mohali.

Explaining the reason of the staff crunch, he said the department appoints most of the teachers in Tarn Taran from nearest districts of Amritsar, Fazilka and Ferozepur, but these teachers prefer to work in schools of their home districts and manage to get transfer sooner or later. “The government should appoint teachers from Tarn Taran district only to curb the problem,” he suggested.

Satnam Singh, a resident of Khemkaran village, said this year the PSEB tried to stop cheating in Class 12 exams, but no efforts are being made to fill vacant posts due to which future of thousands of students is at stake.

Sunita Rani, mother of a government school student in Tarn Taran, said, “We can’t shift our children to private schools as we can’t afford them, but the government should at least recruit adequate staff in the schools if it can’t give better facilities like private institutions. Even, last year, the department failed to give free text books to the needy students till the end of the session.”

The situation is worse in the border villages of the district where the posts have been lying vacant since long, affecting the functioning of the schools adversely.

In March, the Tarn Taran administration had named 34 private institutions and four government schools of the district in its final report submitted to the PSEB for abetting mass copying during the board’s annual examination.