CHENNAI: In the last two years, the school education department launched a plethora of schemes and tried to implement them in government schools across the state. However, it still remains a question whether these schemes have reached all the students, as many government schools are grappling with basic problems including infrastructure and lack of teachers.
According to the CAG report released recently, as of March 2021, 44% of the 108 government schools surveyed lack sufficient classrooms, resulting in classes being conducted in the open and under the shade of trees. There has not been much improvement in the last two years even as the government had announced in the 2022 budget that 18,000 classrooms will be built over a period of five years under the Perasiriyar Anbazhagan School Development Scheme. The officials said, now, they are in the process of identifying the needs of the schools and that no work has started in this regard, except in Vellore district.
Another major issue plaguing the government schools is the shortage of teachers. “The school education department says the temporary teachers appointed by the school management committees will be paid salaries between `12,000 to `18,000. How can they be expected to teach the students properly when they are getting such a meagre amount as salary,” questions Prince Gajendra Babu, General Secretary of State Platform for Common School System.
He also added several schemes of the government, including model schools in which students with good marks are admitted, go against the principle of equality. Similarly, government schools get only Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,500 per month to keep their toilets clean. While around Rs 500 goes to buying cleaning materials in a school, the staff are paid only Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 per month. The headmasters struggle to find sanitary workers, resulting in bad maintenance of toilets. “This fund should be increased so that the staff could be paid a decent amount,” said activists.
Many government school teachers have also been requesting the school education department to cut down their non-teaching work so that they could spend more time with the students. Activists also raised concerns that the DMK government has not upgraded any schools in the past two years. “In Kottadai village in Thalavadi block in Erode district, people paid Rs 1 lakh as their contribution to upgrade the middle school there before eight years. In Kuthiyalathur in Sathiyamangalam block, they paid their contribution for five years to upgrade the school in their area .
While the students have to travel more than eight kilometres to access higher secondary education, nothing has been done so far. Many of the parents here are daily wage labourers and are struggling to collect their contribution for the upgrade. However, their wait is still not over,” said S Natraj, an activist working to uplift tribal children in Erode.
Meanwhile, the school education department officials termed the criticisms as normal when new schemes are implemented. “For example, we initiated the reconstitution of school education committees across the state. We provided training to parents heading the committees and appointed overseers to ensure their effective functioning.
It was done in more than 58,000 schools across the state and there will be some hiccups until the process is streamlined. This is the same case with the reading marathon we started in Illam Thedi Kalvi centres. We are taking suggestions from activists and teachers to improve the schemes,” added the official.