Uttarakhand Primary School Teachers Association has demanded that the State Government should exempt school principal and teachers from different works like verification of ration cards, census, voter cards and other tasks in the State.
Due to deployment of teachers for such works, education in Government schools has been adversely affected in the State, said UPSTA president PS Gusain on Sunday. Gusain said, “Against deployment of teachers on other works, we will intensify our protest across the State or we may move to court if the State Government fails to address our demands.”
Gusain said that teachers from various Government schools are deployed for verification of ration cards. Besides, schoolteachers are being deployed for various works including other statistics related works. As a result, in most of the primary schools, only one or two teachers are teaching more than 100 or 200 students.
According to him, “In this regard, we have recently approached National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and State Commission for Protection of Child Rights. Apart from this, to discuss on this issue, a meeting with higher education officers will be held in the Secretariat auditorium on September 26.”
Another member of the association said that due to shortage of teachers, those teachers who remain in their schools are focusing on providing midday meals to the students or executing other works of centrally sponsored schemes operational in the schools rather than on providing them education.
According to him, the association members would meet the Uttarakhand Education Minister Mantri Prasad Naithani in this regard and submit a memorandum stating excluding teachers from above works. According to him, quality education can not be provided to the students in their schools if teachers are deployed for other works. According to him, works like census, verification of ration cards, voter cards and others should be completed through outsourcing or other ways.
Critics opined that due to deployment of teachers for such works, there are several primary and junior schools with the strength of around 100 students or more each which are being run by no more than one teacher each. Though several schemes including Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation, Midday Meal Scheme, providing free text books, uniform and others are operational in the government schools under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan sponsored by the central government for ensuring quality education in the schools, the benefit of these schemes is being diluted by the unavailability of teachers.