As the Government schools are gearing up to compete with private schools, compromising with the availability of specialised teachers can affect the quality of education in these Government institutions.
During The Pioneer’s visit to South Delhi Government schools, teaching staff complained that they were teaching those subjects in which they had not done their Master’s.
Appreciating the efforts of the AAP Government in the past one year in the field of education, teachers admitted that many improvements have been made by the Kejriwal Government in school infrastructure like constructions of laboratories. “But scarcity of teachers is putting additional burden on contractual and permanent teachers,” they added.
On the condition of anonymity, a senior teacher of Senior Secondary School, Tehkhand, Okhla, said his school has 18 permanent teachers on around 1,800 students and there is no deployment of Post
Graduate Teacher (PGT) in the school. “The school is senior secondary where higher class students opt for specialisation. And we do not have specialised teachers,” said a senior teacher.
The school has posts vacant for economic, math and science subjects.
In another school near Badarpur border, a teacher said the teacher-student ratio in their classrooms is ideal because of the availability of guest and contractual teachers under Sarv Sikhsa Abhiyan (SSA). He, however, said unlike permanent teachers, temporary staff does not take responsibilities beyond academic burden.
“In every classroom, we have 50 students and one teacher which is correct ratio. But sometimes school staff has many responsibilities like extra classes on special subjects and to engage students in extracurricular activities. In such a case, the school
administration compromised by deputing teacher whose specialisation is different,” said an official of Head of School (HOS) position.
Teachers from various schools also said since 1978, there is no hiring of vocational teachers in Delhi Government schools.