Sans principal for past two years, Jawali school faces teacher crunch

Government Senior Secondary School (GSSS) at Harsar in the Jawali Assembly constituency of Kangra district has been facing a shortage of teachers for the past several years, contrary to the tall claims of the state government of providing quality education in government schools. The government is all set to affiliate 100 schools with the CBSE but has failed to fill vacant posts of teacher in the Harsar school, harming the future prospects of students. A skeleton teaching staff is a glaring example of government neglect.

It also raises a question mark on the state government’s policy of closing schools with zero enrolment and merging schools having single-digit enrolment with nearby schools. As per information, the posts of lecturer of physics, Hindi, Sanskrit and Shastri and drawing teachers are vacant. The school boasted of an impressive strength of students in Class XI and XII a few years ago but it had declined to merely 98 at present.

Intriguingly, even the post of school principal has been lying vacant for the past two years. The post of physics lecturer has been vacant for the past one and a half month. Though the Education Department made a time-gap arrangement where a physics lecturer from another school would teach there thrice a week but he, too, got his deputation cancelled on health grounds, leaving science students in the lurch.

Parents, whose wards are studying in this school, are up in arms against the Education Department over the vacant posts of teaching staff. They say that local MLA and Agriculture Minister Chander Kumar is well aware of the vacancies of teaching staff in the school but he did not address the problem. They have now appealed to Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and Education Minister Rohit Thakur to fill the posts of teacher in the school so that the academic session of their wards is not wasted.

Kamal Kumar, president of the School Management Committee, says that he has approached the higher authorities in the Education Department for filling vacant posts of teacher but instead of addressing the problem, a physics lecturer was transferred from the school one and a half month ago. Rakesh Kumar, officiating principal of the school, admits that children from four nearby gram panchayats have enrolled in Class XI and XII in the school. He adds that the Education Department posted a physics lecturer on deputation in the school on Friday and he was likely to take classes from next week.