Half of the academic session has passed, but steps to fulfil the vacant post of teachers or making any alternative arrangement for teaching in schools is not in sight even as the State Government’s scheme to appoint retired teachers/lecturers fell flat with hardly any retired teacher coming forward to shoulder the responsibility.
Notably, from primary to higher secondary level schools, ashram schools or even hostels (residential schools) in Bastar are facing acute shortage of teachers, specially subject specialists like that of Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and English. Against the sanctioned strength of over a thousand posts, Bastar Schools are running with merely 20 per cent teachers and that too without subject teachers.
Both lack of teachers locally and raging Maoist insurgency warding off outsiders to go to the area are assigned as the reason for this sorry state of affairs.To improve the situation, the State Government had decided to appoint retired teachers / lecturers in schools to fill the vacancy of teachers as no suitably candidates were found to be appointed as Shikshakarmis.
But, barring a few, retired teachers too did not come forward to shoulder the responsibility even when they were given the choice to teach at their preferred location.
This dealt a severe jolt to the State Government scheme. After which the education department decided to overcome the lack of teachers by giving the teaching work on contract.In schools run by Tribal Development Department too it was decided assign the teaching work to private parties to overcome teachers’ scarcity.
However, before the scheme could take root, schedule for ensuing Assembly polls was announced and as the code of conduct came in to force, the entire scheme is put into cold storage. Meanwhile, School Education Department Assistant Director Bharti Pradhan said that despite lack of sufficient number of teachers, principals of all the schools have been directed to get complete the syllabus at any rate.