A recent statistical study divulges appalling conditions of government schools in Punjab, India, with over fifty-five schools running without teachers.
Punjab, an Indian state best-known for its extremely hospitable crowd and ebullient festivals, has shot to attention for the wrong reasons.
The department of primary and secondary education conducted a statistical survey to reveal that more than fifty-five schools in the bordering areas of Punjab have secured student admissions without recruiting teachers.
Moreover, there are over one thousand schools in the entire state with just one teacher.
While many schools have decided to give up in despair, given the pitiful plight of the schools along the border, others are still struggling to source more than one teacher.
Lack of infrastructure and political connections are acting as deterrents
One of the reasons for this skew is the dismal state of infrastructure and insufficient funding. Having to cope up with wretched conditions such as dearth of sanitary services, lack of electricity and mediocre income scale for government staff, the school authorities neither have sufficient capital to hire enough teachers nor government funding to better the deteriorating conditions.
Other sources have revealed that it all started when OP Soni, former Education Minister, elected to transfer over two hundred teachers from bordering areas.
The current Education Minister in the region, Vijay Inder Singla, has confirmed that the government has commenced the restoration process by reviewing stationing of the teachers in the region.
Attempts to get it back on track
Pledging his support for an unambiguous and transparent system, Chief Minister of Punjab, Amarinder Singh, released orders on Tuesday to restore teacher deployment under the renewed transfer policy.
Department of School Education has undertaken all relocation orders of teaching staff through a robust online system, which combats prevailing corruption in the education sector by banishing the need for manual intervention.
The renewed transfer policy also stipulates that once a teacher deployment has been agreed upon and initiated, there will be no issuance of new transfer for the next three years. This will ensure that the schools are poised to run their day-to-day operations efficiently and plan staff recruitment well in advance.
Although India is not new to reports uncovering distressing school conditions in the country, strangely enough, the UK has also been witnessing similar scarcity of qualified teachers. Last year, the region witnessed a severe lack of qualified teachers with tens of thousands of teaching professionals flocking abroad in the hopes of better salaries and working environments.
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