Perhaps inspired by first Sikh Guru Nanak who professed to spread good people everywhere so that good virtues are spread in the society, the State education department is planning to emulate his ideas in transfer of teachers so that best teachers are available everywhere.
In view of the pathetic performance of the students and low pass percentage in the board examinations the education department is giving final touches to the policy of performance-based transfer of teachers. As per the new policy, the performance of the teachers will be viewed in terms of last three years’ results while considering their request for transfers.
The Secondary Education Director C S Gwal told The Pioneer in the proposed plan different bench marks to gauge the performance of the teachers would be used.
He said that the teachers scoring high on these benchmarks would be given priority in the transfers and would be posted in their desired schools. Gwal said that the department is also planning to implement a minimum level of academic achievement for the teachers and the school heads failing which stern action could be taken against them. He however refused to divulge exact details of the proposed policy and said that it would be released soon.
The transfer of teachers is a big issue and the teachers always try hard to get posting in the accessible schools. The schools of the state are classified into Accessible and Inaccessible categories on the basis of factors like their location, distance from the health facilities, distance from road head, distance from the cities etc. The Accessible category is further subdivided into A, B and C categories while the Inaccessible has D, E and F categories.
On the basis of the results the education department has also categorized the schools in A, B and C categories. The schools giving more than 80 percent pass ratio would be placed in “A” category and provided a letter of appreciation while 60- 80 percent pass ratio school would be under “B” category, these schools would be asked to improve their performance. In the “C” category the schools with less than 60 percent results would be kept, the school heads would be served a notice in which they will be asked to explain the poor performance before the director.
The schools affiliated to the Uttarakhand Vidhyalayi Shiksha Parishad Ramnagar fared poorly in both class X and Class XII results. Only 67.40 percent students passed in the class X result this year as compared to a healthy 71.43 pass percentage last year. In class XII also the pass percentage this year was a poor 70.39 percent as compared to an impressive 79.82 percent last year.
It is interesting to note that the students of districts located in the plains like Haridwar and US Nagar fared poorly in the board examinations while the remote and mountainous districts like Rudraprayag, Pithoragarh and Bageshwar performed much better than their counterparts in the plains.