Redundant teachers

The lopsided allocation of teachers to public schools in the country that are already woefully short of educational manpower has seriously undermined the quality of education in many government-run schools. Out of the total of 147,000 teachers employed in the country’s primary, lower secondary and higher secondary schools – which is 40,000 short of the requirement – some 1,200 teachers are reportedly redundant because they have been posted at places where their services are not required. Ironically, at the same time, many other schools have been complaining that they have not been allocated the required number of teachers i.e. one teacher for every 40 students.



Besides affecting the educational quality of schools that even otherwise are not known for churning out able manpower, the Ministry of Education’s (MoEs) failure to implement its policy of transferring redundant teachers to schools in need has facilitated wastage of money to the tune of 120 million rupees from the state coffers because teachers – who draw an average monthly paycheck of 10,000 rupees – have been getting paid without having to work sufficiently.



There seems to be two reasons for why the MoE has not been able to allocate quotas as per the teacher-student ratio. One, when the student number decreases in a given school, the Department of Education seems to be too indifferent to the need to transfer them to another school that is in need of his/her services. Two, many schools themselves seem to be reluctant to give up quotas for the fear that when student numbers go up again, they would not be allocated new quotas as per their requirement. And their fear is not unfounded. School principals concede that it is quite an uphill task to get new quotas without political backing. This clearly shows that there is a serious problem in the entire mechanism of allocating and taking back the assigned quotas. That also means that MoE needs to urgently put a proper and efficient mechanism in place.



It is no secret that the public schools in our country are without even basic infrastructure such as desks and benches and quality teaching staff. Some of them have to study in open spaces and, if they are lucky enough, buildings without roofs. We cannot add one more problem, which is clearly manageable, to that long and unfortunate list. The MoE must tighten its belt and sort out this issue of quotas as soon as possible. No same government should overlook the anomalies plaguing the education sector for that would be tantamount to playing with the future of the country.

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