APAAR project: Teachers, Edu Dept at loggerheads

Getting details on APAAR project seems to have become a Herculean task. While the district education authorities are pressing upon teachers to complete the task as soon as possible, the latter condemn the authorities for putting so much pressure on them, especially during the times when board examinations are approaching and parents themselves were not willing to provide any details of their wards.

Meanwhile, many teachers rue that governments were harassing them and putting unnecessary pressure to do non-teaching jobs.

Collecting data is not part of the teaching job, they said.

Gurpreet Singh from the Democratic Teachers’ Front said making another ID under the APAAR project was nothing but sheer wastage of time. Several IDs of students had already been made, regular data about their performance is sent on various portals of the state Education Department. Moreover, when parents are reluctant to provide details of their wards, how could teachers put pressure on them for the same, he asked, adding that when they approach district education officials about problems being faced during the exercise, their requests go unheard.

While strict instructions are being sent by the Education Department to DEOs and teachers to make the IDs of the students under the APAAR project, only 30-40 per cent of the task has been accomplished by schools in the district so far.

Another teacher complained that government schools were also having students belonging to the migrant population and many of them had got their children registered both at their native villages and in Ludhiana.

“Such parents are not eager to provide their Aadhaar card or other details to the schools in the city. These problems are not being resolved by higher-ups and even we don’t have any right to put pressure on the parents to provide documents,” the teacher added.

At the same time, DEO (primary) Ravinder Kaur said the APAAR IDs were to be made and there was no escape from the same.

“Teachers need to make parents understand about benefits of the project. With it, performance of students, their records and results, etc, will be just a click away. Hence, the teachers should convince the parents to do the needful,” she added.