Rationalisation policy leaves teachers fuming

Aparna Banerji

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, September 13

With primary schools of the state grappling with a severe shortage of teachers and many of them managing with single teachers, the newly introduced rationalisation policy of the state government has earned the wrath of teachers.

Teachers said the government move seems poised to remove the ‘Khedo Punjab’ component of the government school education in the district, which won’t thrive without physical education teachers. They said the move will also indirectly effect the Tandaurst Punjab mission, which was ambitiously started by the government.

With the state government about to remove as many as 5,000 teachers of the C&V, art and craft and physical education cadres, the government schools have strongly objected the move. With middle schools based in Sultanpur Lodhi about to lose 161 of their teachers, teachers of the town on Thursday submitted a memorandum to Sultanpur Lodhi MLA Navtej Singh Cheema in this regard.

Teachers have asked the MLA to take up the issue with the Education Minister.

Ravi Wahi, a teacher based in Sultanpur Lodhi, said: “Primary and middle schools in the state are already emptying out. These schools are the basis for the child’s education, fitness and artistic faculties. At this level, taking out physical education and other art and classical and vernacular teachers, means causing students to lose out on all sports and art activities. Students won’t be able to compete in games, their basic sporting right is being snatched away by the decision. To add to it, the schools’ existing staff, in turn, will be overburdened with the removal of these teachers. It’s a bad move for the state education.”

In the memorandum submitted to the MLA, teachers said this was a violation of the service rules of the state government. They said while the CBSE was making sports mandatory up to matriculation, the government schools were totally removing sports and fitness from the schools which would affect the schools – which currently act as nurseries for budding sportspersons – to languish.

An ETT teacher based in Kapurthala said: “Drugs has already taken a toll on the youth in the state. Sporting activity is at its lowest ebb. Schools which produce national and international players are now struggling to keep sports modules alive. At a time when sports needed to be boosted and more sports teachers needed to be hired, the government is completely dispensing with sports teachers in the primary schools. It’s like a fatal blow to the sporting aspirations of students in the state.”