District schools sans physical education instructors

Tribune News Service

Advertisement

Jalandhar, August 26

Asian Games are being held in Jakarta, Indonesia, where many players from India have been winning medals. However, the condition of sports in the district is alarming.

Though the district is a hub of sports goods manufacturers in the country and Sports College of the district was once the trailblazer of sports in the state, government schools in the district present a different story.

It is found that many schools in the district are running without physical education lecturers, degree in physical education (DPE) teachers and physical training instructors (PTIs). In Jalandhar schools, as per data available in 2016, 51 per cent of the PT and DPE teachers’ posts are lying vacant. The data has exposed the negligence of the government towards sports.

As many as 285 posts of sports and physical education-related teachers are lying vacant in the district (159 posts of DPE teachers against the sanctioned 268, 119 posts of physical training instructors against 243 and seven vacancies for physical education lecturers.) Official sources said now, the vacancy had increased to over 51 per cent.

As a result, the majority of the schools are running without such teachers. There is no mention of sports in the timetable.

A teacher from a district government school said: “We just follow the orders passed by the authorities as we do not have any sports teacher. Someone from the existing teachers handle the morning assembly and there was no training for students due to the absence of a sports teacher.”

“Many schools do not even have any ground and those who have school grounds do not have sports equipment for students due to lack of funds. Priorities of the government have changed as they want to spend money on other things and not on sports. Sports are supposed to be an integral part of the education as it helps in personality building,” he said.

Harbinder Singh, assistant education officer, said no recruitment of teachers had been made for quite a long time.