The Education Department is gearing itself to bring in thousands of primary school teachers under the system of confidential reports (CR). The department intends to use the ratings in the CR for promotions and transfers of teachers.
The department swung into action after the Chief Minister Harish Rawat gave a stern warning to the senior officials to improve the sorry state of affairs in the Government schools of the State. There are more than 45,000 teachers in the Government primary schools of the State though there was a provision of writing CR for them it was rarely monitored and was more or less redundant.
The Primary Education Director DS Kunwar said that the department was working on the parameters which would be adopted for the CR of primary teachers. He said that the quality of the teaching in the primary schools would be checked from time to time and strict disciplinary action would be taken against the teachers who are found absent.
The department was also mulling over the methods to be adopted for rating the performance of the teachers. The CR once implemented would be used for selecting the teachers for departmental promotions. Most importantly the department is intending to use the CR for the contentious issue of transfer of teachers.
The teaching community however is skeptical about the new provisions. One of the primary teachers posted at Pauri Garhwal district said that since under the guidelines of universal Right to Education the schools can not take any examinations of the students till class VIII then how the department would grade the teachers on the basis of performance of the students.
The president of the Prathemik Shikshak Sangh (PSS) Nirmala Mahar said that the PSS supports the idea of implementing CR for primary teachers but care should be taken so that the teachers are not unduly harassed by this.