Faridabad, December 24
The shortage of basic infrastructure, including staff and classrooms, bedevils a majority of the government schools in the region. Absenteeism of staff adds to the woes of such schools leading to further deterioration in the standard of education.
The deteriorating state of education in the region has paved the way for the mushrooming growth of private and public schools. There are about 164 senior secondary and high schools and 595 primary schools in the district. While the staff strength in schools located in urban and its peripheral areas are somewhat satisfactory, the situation is particularly grim in the schools in villages or remote areas.
Almost 90 per cent of the schools located in the far-flung areas have inadequate staff strength. There are many schools where only one to three teachers have been running the show having the strength of over 400 students.
Almost half of the schools in rural areas don’t have headmasters or headmistresses to lead them. Some of the principals have been given extra responsibility of two to three schools at a time.
The Government Girls School at Ballabgarh is not only facing a staff crunch, but has no room for about 1,000 students of classes six, seven and nine. These children have to sit out in the open throughout the year.
For those students of class eight and above, who have proper classrooms, their teachers are presently occupied in works related to the forthcoming elections in the state. Needless to say, there is little serious studies going on in the schools of the area.
Sources in the Education Department confirm the fact that a majority of schools in the area had similar problems, which included shortage of rooms, teachers and other basic infrastructure necessary for imparting fundamental education.
The state of affairs in the middle and primary schools are more serious. While students have to sit on the ground, the mat to be supplied by the school is often not available to many students. Teachers and students are often asked to arrange for chalks and blackboards, as nearly half of the schools lack does not have them. Even the basic facilities like toilet and clean drinking water is rare at several places.
The village panchayats that have raised these problems concerning the shortage of rooms and buildings are asked by the authorities to collect and pool in at least 50 per cent of the required funds and free land. The repeated assurance of providing the necessary staff to schools is hardly met, according to residents of a nearby village. Lamenting at the poor standard of education, he said due to this and the lack of infrastructure, an increasing number of parents were opting for private education for their wards.
According to Education Department sources, there were a good number of primary schools where the staff had been maintaining ‘bogus’ attendance registers of several students, who are enrolled in government schools, but actually study in private schools.
Effectively, private schools had come up in several villages, said a retired schoolteacher. The district Primary Education Officer had conducted several raids in the recent past and found “absentee teachers” a common problem.
The officials have ‘ordered’ strict action against them including the deduction of salary of “absentee” teachers.
