HYDERABAD: The School Education department on Friday issued a general order to reorganise the school units and provide teachers to needy schools by adjusting surplus teachers. The move aims to address the issue of irrational allocation of teachers and uneven student-to-teacher ratio in government schools.
The order directed the collectors to make adjustments at district levels by relocating surplus teachers to those schools where there are fewer or no teachers. It said that the adjustments will have to be completed by September 28 and a report on the same will have to be submitted to Director of School Education department EV Narasimha Reddy.
As per the latest UDISE+ data, enrolment in government schools has been dropping year on year. Upon analysing the data and field information, one of the reasons was found to be was irrational allocation of teachers in the schools. “The state-level teacher-to-student ratio is 1:17, which appears to be far better compared to the minimum requirement of 1:30 under the RTE Act,” the department observed.
The department said that school-wise data revealed analogies in the number of teachers against the children’s enrolment in government schools as it is reported that teachers outnumbered the students in some schools and vice-versa. This anomaly was to be addressed immediately to bring quality education from the primary to high school level.
The decision was taken after all the enrolments, transfers and promotions were completed for the session, giving a clear picture of schools in the state, officials said.
Narasimha Reddy told TNIE, “This is a local level adjustment to address the anomaly in the schools where we found that there are surplus teachers and some schools had more student enrolments but were understaffed.”
“We have issued a general order to the collectors and asked them to make the adjustments at intra-district levels till the time the DSE recruitment is done. Since we have seen the enrolment in government schools dip this year. Once the recruits join, we will decide on the present arrangements based on the requirements. This order does not imply any transfers or relocations, but only unit level movement of teachers. The exercise should be completed by the Dasara vacations,” he added.
As per the order, if two primary schools, two upper primary schools, one primary and one upper primary school are functioning on the same premises, those schools will be treated as one school unit and teachers will be adjusted as per the need. Also, two high schools functioning in the same premises would be treated as one school.
However, teachers said that this exercise was unnecessary in the light of the new DSE recruitments in which 11,062 teachers will be recruited.
General Secretary of the Telangana State United Teachers Federation Chava Ravi told TNIE, “ The government is already in the process of hiring new teachers in the government schools and the DSE exams were already conducted. This exercise looks only a temporary solution which could have been avoided. We feel that the decision was taken because many parents are outraged at the shortage of teachers in these schools and this year alone 2.4 lakh students from government schools moved to private schools due to lack of teachers.”
