MADURAI: In order to put an end to the practice of government school teachers taking private tuitions and indulging in other businesses, the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court (HC) ordered the principal secretary of the School Education Department to form special teams and to file a compliance report within four weeks.
Justice SM Subramaniam passed the order while rejecting a plea filed by a secondary grade government school teacher, K Radha, seeking a transfer within 30-km radius of the government school where her husband JD Abernadrine is working.
The judge said the day-to-day administration was vested with competent authorities. However, he made a serious note of the irregularities in the department. The government is allocating funds for the improvement of the government schools and also paying decent salaries to the teachers. However, the prevailing scenario is that the teachers are largely engaged in private tuitions, doing business or part-time jobs, the judge said.
The judge told the principal secretary to issue necessary guidelines, instructions or circulars to all subordinate officials to periodically assess the performance and teaching pattern of the teachers and to initiate appropriate review and corrective measures.
“The teachers should be consistently monitored. The activities of the recognised and registered teacher associations should be verified and action must be taken against all erring associations,” the judge said and adjourned the case to April 4.
Radha, in her petition, said she was working as a secondary grade teacher at Panchayat Union Middle School in Eachangudi at Pabanasam and her husband JD Abernadrine, also a secondary grade teacher, was working at Corporation Middle School in Thanjavur.
She claimed she was unable to travel from Thanjavur to Eachangudi on a daily basis as the distance between her school and her husband’s was 32-33 kilometres. The government advocate appearing for the chief education officer of Thanjavur said the distance between the schools of the petitioner and her husband is around 18 km.
Stolen idol buried in temple tank: Idol wing
Chennai: The stolen peacock idol belonging to the Mylapore Kapaleeswarar Temple might have been buried in the temple tank and technological assistance of Anna University has been sought for tracing it, the Idol Wing of Crime Branch-CID (CB-CID) submitted in the HC. State Public Prosecutor Hasan Mohammed Jinnah made the submission on Tuesday when a petition filed by Srirangam-based activist Rangarajan Narasimhan came up for hearing. Observing that tracing the stolen idol is the best thing instead of replacing it with a new one, the bench gave two weeks time for the retrieval.