Staff crunch takes toll on quality teaching at government schools in Telangana

This can be gauged from the fact in the last five years, there has been no teacher recruitments in the State.
Image used for representational purpose. (File photo  | EPS)
Image used for representational purpose. (File photo | EPS)

HYDERABAD: Parents of students in the State, it appears, are caught between the devil and the deep sea when it comes to providing quality schooling to their children. With little regulation over fee of private schools that skyrockets every academic year, parents end up paying through their nose. Enrolling their children in government schools is also unthinkable for most middle and lower-middle-class families due to poor quality of teaching with staff crunch.

This can be gauged from the fact in the last five years, there has been no teacher recruitments in the State. This has resulted in a situation wherein 4,587 government schools across the State are being run by a single teacher and nearly 2,600 schools have been shut down. Among the five southern states, after Andhra Pradesh which has 7,483 single teacher schools, Telangana has the second largest such schools.

With a little over a fortnight left for the new academic session to commence and over 29,000 teacher posts (in primary, upper primary, secondary and high) in State-run schools still lying vacant, the scarcity of teacher is going to continue this year too, according to experts. There are 1.10 lakh teacher posts in 28,000 government schools in Telangana.

“There are 6,000 vacancies for subject teachers only in high schools. Like last year, this year too 16,400 Vidya Volunteers will be appointed but these are not substitutes for regular teachers,” said Chava Ravi, general Secretary Telangana State United Teachers Federation.   

The situation in government primary schools is no better. “For each of the five classes (1-5) there are 22 subjects with seven periods daily but there are only two teachers on an average per school. Which means that at any point only two classes will be engaged and students in other classes will be sitting idle,” said Nagati Narayana, city-based educationist.     

In view of the large number of vacancies, in October 2017 the government had conducted Teacher Recruitment Test (TRT) for 8,792 posts. The selection was also done and yet 15 months later the shortlisted candidates still have not been given postings. “The government was also supposed to conduct another round of TRT to fill the vacancies but instead it is contemplating rationalisation of teaching posts and schools,” he said.

Teachers opposed to rationalisation bid

Government school teachers have been opposed to the idea of rationalisation. Sushma Rani, a Government High School from Kukatpally told Express that instead of shutting down schools, the government should concentrate on finding reasons why government schools are lagging behind

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