The Education department has started the process of setting up revised norms for grading schools on the basis of accessibility. After establishing these norms the Government schools would be graded into different categories of accessibility. The department has formed a committee headed by Additional Director V S Rawat which is working on the modalities of making new guidelines for Sugam (Accessible) and Durgam (hard to access) schools. After the selection of the criteria, the transfer act of the teachers would be implemented by the department.
A meeting of the committee was organised on Monday and its other meeting is scheduled on Wednesday. The committee is going through the present grading criteria and would discuss block and district wise framework for grading the schools.
The education director, R K Kunwar said that a broad framework for the new gradation categories would be provided by the committee after which the opinion of different teacher organisations would be taken up.
The president of the Rajkeeya Shikshak Sangh (RSS), K K Dimri said that a meeting of the executive body of the association has been called on February 26 in which discussions would be held on the grading parameters of the schools.
Under present policy the teachers posted in the inaccessible areas of the State for eight or more years would be eligible for transfer in the school located in accessible area. Similarly the spouses of armed forces personnel are given preference in the transfers.
Presently, the schools of the state are classified into Accessible area and inaccessible area categories on the basis of factors like their location, distance from the health facilities, distance from road head, distance from the cities etc. There are more than 80000 teachers in the Government schools of the State and transfer is the most contentious issue for them.