TIRUCHY: Educationalists demand reopening of all District Institutes of Education Training (DIET). The training institutes for elementary teachers they say are important considering the increased influx of students to government schools. They have submitted a petition with the School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi on Monday.
Admissions to over 20 DIETs were closed and since 2018 only 12 of the institutes were providing training. The then AIADMK government cited decreased admissions to these institutes for closing them.
A DIET lecturer said, "The institutions admitted students on merit unlike private institutions. However, the admissions were delayed by over three months compared to colleges and private training institutes. Due to this, students were pushed away from DIETs." He added, "Until 2015, there was a healthy competition to join DIETs. However, with delayed admissions DIETs also started delaying providing transfer certificates because of which we could not attract the best of the students like before."
The lecturers argued that with multiple private institutions operating in many districts, closing the government-run ones in the same places was unjustified.
Commenting on it, Satish Kumar, an educationalist based out of Pudukkottai, who is DIET trained teacher, said, "DIETs ensure quality assurance among teachers. Now we need that more than ever considering there is a huge influx of students from private schools into government schools in the past two years.
Our State needs more government school teachers, especially in elementary schools. Many schools with over 100 students and 1-5 classes, have just two teachers. We need to have at least one teacher for each class. The vacancies are overwhelming."