HYDERABAD: The education department is already faced with a plethora of problems due to a large number of vacant posts of regular district education officers (DEO), deputy district education officers (DyDEO) and mandal education officers (MEO). And adding to the woes is the latest diktat to inspect CBSE schools, which the already burdened officials claim is very difficult to implement.
According to education department sources, of the 31 DEOs in the State, only 10 are regular appointees and the remaining ones are acting DEOs while all the 63 dyDEO posts are lying vacant. In 584 mandals, there are 539 sanctioned MEO posts but only 36 regular MEOs are presently on the job. In rest of the 503 mandals, headmasters are given full additional charge of MEO posts.
The headmasters, each of whom are now in-charge of at least 200 schools, allege that as a result they are unable to attend to their regular duties since they are always away to inspect the schools.
Chava Ravi, general secretary of Telangana State United Teachers Federation (TSUTF), said that lack of regular appointments was having a telling impact on education in general and supervision of schools in particular.
Inspection of SSC schools in the State is done currently by FAC MEOs and this too is not done properly, he said, adding that in the current scheme of things, for inspection of CBSE schools government has to come up with a new mechanism as handing it over to the FAC MEOs might not work. One of the DEOs, on the condition of anonymity, told Express that such inspection of CBSE schools cannot be undertaken in Telangana.
“If we had to conduct visits, it would have been fine but inspection of all schools when we are so short on manpower is not possible. In our schools too we only do random inspection,” the officer said. The teaching community, therefore, has been demanding regularisation of 21 DEO posts, along with one DEO per constituency & 45 additional posts MEO posts to ensure one for each mandal.
“Overlooking the need for supervisory officials has resulted in the collapse of the education sector in TS. There is absenteeism in government schools because HMs are not there to monitor teachers. Neither teaching is done nor are schemes implemented properly,” said T Swaroopa, a government school teacher.