Teachers' unions upset at deputation to far-flung places

Jalandhar, December 24

Even as various teachers’ unions as well as block and district mentors have welcomed the decision of the Education Department of discontinuing their duties from various education projects, the orders of their deputation to far-off schools instead of sending them back to their own schools have not gone down well with them.

Block and district mentors said: “On one hand, the Education Department has freed us from additional duties, on the other, it has increased our burden as we have to travel 100 to 200 km away from our station of posting to teach in other schools.”

They added that above all, in their place, no teachers had been deputed, thus the students in their actually posted schools would suffer.

B.Ed Teachers’ Front, Punjab, president Sukhdarshan Singh, district president Ravinder Singh and general secretary Kamaljit Singh, in their joint statement, appealed to the government not to send teachers to distant schools and mentally harass them. Instead, they should be sent back to the schools where they were actually posted.

They said the government should focus on recruitment of new teachers. “The teachers should only be deputed to other schools if there are sufficient teachers at their originally posted schools, so as to ensure their own students are not affected,” they added.

Block and district mentors said during all these years, they had done various works as a subject expert under Parho Punjab and helped prepare workbooks, map galaxies, online games, educare app, teacher manuals, model test papers, etc. In addition, they have visited two schools on a daily basis along with managing their schools they were originally posted to.

They said though the Education Department, in order to achieve Mission 100%, had passed the orders of deputing all block mentors to different schools, it had failed to understand that there was already a great need of teachers in their own schools.

Government Teachers’ Union, Punjab, general secretary Kuldip Singh Daurka said if the government really wanted to free teachers from additional duties, it should cancel their deputation in Parho Punjab in primary and secondary education, media cellc and other departments.

Parmod Bharti, an educationist, said: “The AAP government seems to be in a quandary, though it has been criticising Punjab’s top ranking in the field of education by terming it just a manipulation based on fake data and clamouring of ‘Delhi Model’ to bring in qualitative improvement in school education. But to date, not even an iota of its visionary road map is in sight.”

He added that instead of taking steps to implement Delhi Model, the education department is simply furthering almost all the projects conceived and implemented during the past five years of Congress regime, be it smart schools, enrollment drive, PTMs and Mission 100%.

Move to help manage staff shortage

All deputations are made keeping in mind the availability of teachers and student strength in each school. The reason behind these temporary deputations is to manage shortage of teachers at some schools and achieve Mission 100 per cent in true sense. — Education Department officials