CHENNAI: The report of CAG for the year ending 2022 has found "serious lapses" in the functioning of government secondary and higher secondary schools in the state. As per the report, the quality of education was affected by inadequate budgetary allocation by the state government, delay in the recruitment of teachers and shortfall in sanctioned posts of teachers.
The performance audit conducted from 2016 to 2021 found funding for secondary and higher secondary education coming down from 0.94 per cent of Tamil Nadu's GSDP in 2016-17 to 0.85 per cent in 2020-21. "The government did not accord adequate budgetary priority to the development of secondary and higher secondary education. Inadequate funding has resulted in wide gaps in infrastructure requirement," the report said.
There are 3,685 secondary and 4,339 higher secondary schools in the state. The audit said there is a vacancy of 18,862 teachers against sanctioned posts, but the requirement is much more than the sanctioned strength.
"Need-based assessment of requirement of teachers in nine sampled districts was 19,751 against the actual sanctioned strength of 17,855. Thus, the need-based actual requirement was 10.62 per cent higher than the sanctioned posts. Considering the estimated shortfall in sanctioned post with reference to the need and vacancy, the person in position fell short of the actual need by 31,490," the report said.
Vacancies of total teachers against sanctioned strength stood at 15.87 per cent, vacancies of Tamil teachers and other language teachers at 56% and 44% respectively. Vacancies of vocational instructors stood at 55 per cent.
The report lashed out at the Teachers' Recruitment Board for not conducting recruitment in time. "Recruitment processes of the board were delayed as it could be seen that recruitment of PG teachers announced in 2018 was incomplete even in by the end of March 2022," the report said.