AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat Assembly was infor med that over 9,000 teachers were slapped with a cumulative fine of 1.54 crore over a two-year period for making mistakes in adding up marks while evaluating answer papers for Classes X and XII board exams.
Responding to a question from Congress MLA Kirit Patel during question hour on Tuesday, state education minister Kuber Dindor said as many as 9,218 teachers — 3,350 from Class X and 5,868 from Class XII made errors in calculating marks during the assessment of board exam answer sheets in 2022 and 2023.
According to the written reply submitted in the house, the state government imposed a total fine of Rs 1.54 crore on these instructors. The average fine is roughly Rs 1,600 per teacher. Of the 9,218 erring teachers, 6,561, including 2,563 who evaluated Class X answer papers and 3,998 from Class XII, have already deposited slightly more than Rs 1 crore.
The government response indicated that 2,657 teachers, including 787 from Class 10 and 1,870 from Class XII, had failed to pay fines of Rs 53.97 lakh.
To recover pending dues from instructors who made mistakes on the March 2022 board exam, the state education department approached them through their school administration and the district education officer in charge.
The state education department contacted them through their school management. Education Minister Dindor said, “The department has issued one recovery notice to teachers who committed errors in judging answer sheets for the March 2023 board test and have failed to submit the penalty.”
To avoid any dispute, the education Minister stated that penalties were imposed on erring instructors only after they were shown their mistakes in person to avoid any dispute.
To prevent such errors from going unnoticed, the department assigns a validator to each evaluation team stationed at assessment centers.
Replying to another question in the assembly, the Gujarat government also acknowledged that 13,013 teaching positions were unfilled across government and private-aided secondary and higher secondary schools in Gujarat.
The data shows that the vacancies include 2,344 in government schools and a significant 10,669 in private-aided institutions.