Nearly 50 Hyderabad Schools Function Without A Teacher!

There are about 50 schools in Hyderabad functioning without any teachers, revealed an assessment by the district information system for education (DISE) in report. 

Across Telangana, the picture is equally dismal with 957 schools crying for staff. Several surveys have revealed the poor performance of students in the state and the assessment report highlights how lack of teachers is one of the major reasons behind it.

While the government appoints around 2.5 lakh teachers every year, the report clearly shows how the efforts have fallen flat towards the requirement in all schools. “The numbers clearly show uneven distribution of teachers in all schools. We have demanded to the government several times to appoint more teachers. 

However, the report reveals how ignorant the government is towards this issue,“ said Sanjeev Rao, general secretary of Telangana State United Teachers Federation.

The report reveals how several schools have violated the rule of 1:30 teacher-pupil ratio as per the Right to Education Act, 2009. It goes on to say how 787 schools are functioning with less than three teachers in Hyderabad. 

Adding to the report, there are 427 schools running with sin gle teachers. “There are about 82,011 students studying in these 427 schools. That means, one teacher is teaching about 192 students on an average. Teachers have to go for invigilation, fulfill the continuous and comprehensive evaluation system, meet district education officers and complete several other duties,“ Rao went on to highlight the pathetic condition in these schools.

Educationists believe that it is due to lack of a monitoring system that schools are functioning with fewer teachers. “The education department itself lacks the resources to keep tabs on teachers. 

The department first needs to recruit supervising inspectors in order to inspect the situation on field,“ said M Samyukta, vice-president of School Teachers Federation of India.According to sources, 21 out of 24 supervising inspectors posts are lying vacant in the education department in Hyderabad.

If this was not enough, there are about 3,616 schools functioning without headmasters. In such cases, teachers share the additional burden to run the schools.“In my school, each class has 6070 students. 

This way, it becomes very difficult to look after each student's performance,“ rued P Anuradha, a teacher at a government school in Borabanda. “The government needs to recruit at least one teacher per class in order to reduce the burden on teachers like us,“ she added.

After the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation system was implemented, teachers complain about spending more time on non-academic work.