In spite of having appointed over 20,000 teachers at primary, lower secondary and secondary levels in the last three years under relief quotas provided for by donor agencies, the Ministry of Education (MoE) is still short of over 40,000 teachers. [break]
However, of the total of 147,000 teachers employed in the country at present, over 1,200 teachers have not been put to full use, according to MoE officials.
MoE spends Rs 10,000 a month on an average for a teacher. Going by a simple calculation of the average salary and the number of redundant teachers, MoE can save millions in a single month.
However, owing to MoE´s failure to implement its policy of transferring redundant teachers to schools that are seriously lacking in educational manpower, the state exchequer has been overburdened footing unnecessary salaries.
"A teacher quota of more than 12,000 has been allocated to schools that already have a sufficient number of teachers," said Hari Lamsal, deputy director at the Department of Education (DoE). At the same time, Lamsal regrets that scores of schools that lack teachers have failed to receive an adequate quota of teachers.
Tall order
In recent years, the glory of Durbar High School (DHS), the country´s first modern educational institution, has become blurred, given the falling number of students. At present, DHS has hardly 320 students. However, the school has a teacher quota of 21, which is 13 more than the ideal number required.
Under the government´s Per Child Fund (PCF), a community school secures a quota of one teacher once it garners 40 students. However, even before the advent of the PCF, the government had adhered to this ´ideal´ ratio. DHS also had secured so many quota teachers as per this ratio.
Nonetheless, even after the number of students dwindled, DHS did not agree to give up some of its quota.
Recently, the District Education Committee (DEC) of Kathmandu, which is entrusted with the responsibility of transferring teachers, pressed DHS to relinquish unnecessary quota to nearby schools that are in greater need. DHS, however, managed to retain its surplus quota.
According to Dev Kumar Baral, chief of Community Schools Section at the District Education Office (DEO) in Kathmandu, the DEC ended up placing only two quota teachers from DHS in a pool.
Placing quota teachers in a pool means their virtual suspension. DEC can transfer suspended quotas only after securing the consent of the school management committee (SMC) concerned. DHS, however, is adamant about not losing its suspended quota.
"Transferring redundant teacher quotas is a tall order," said Baral. "We cannot effect transfers of teachers within the same city, let alone transferring them to remote districts where the schools really need them."
According to Baral, a teacher who works at Gyaneshwar refuses outright to join another school at nearby Baneshwar. "And there is not much we can do," Baral said.
DHS is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, many schools in the capital, and outside as well, have managed to retain unnecessary teacher quotas. This has exacerbated the scarcity of teachers. In schools in the villages, one teacher has been forced to teach more than one class at a time.
"We cannot withstand pressure"
According to Janardan Nepal, spokesperson for MoE, transferring redundant quota teachers to schools in greater need is government policy. However, Nepal concedes, MoE has not been able to implement this policy.
"Not only politics, our educational system is also in a transitional phase as the School Sector Reform Plan (SSRP) is underway," Nepal told myrepublica.com. "Therefore, our current strategy is not to let schools appoint teachers under quota that falls vacant after old teachers retire."
But contrary to what the MoE spokesperson asserts, government officials concede that they are unable to even prevent appointments to vacant quota slots. "If we try to prevent a school from filling vacant posts for teachers, we will be forced to relent," a DoE official told myrepublica.com on condition of anonymity. "We cannot stand up to political pressure."
MoE´s failure to transfer unnecessary teacher quotas to needy schools has been due to some extent to the government´s own rigid policy.
Consider what DHS Principal Dhananjay Yadav has to say. "We are planning to start +2 in future, for which we require more teachers," he told myrepublica.com. "If we relinquish the redundant quota now, who will give us more teachers in future when we need them?"
Yadav´s fears of his school falling short of teachers in future are not baseless. The government is more rigid in allocating new teacher quotas than in removing them. Schools believe that once they lose quota teachers, they will not regain them even when they need them.
"This belief, which is justified to an extent, has left schools fighting to retain redundant quotas," said Baburam Thapa, general secretary of Nepal National Teachers´ Association (NNTA). "In the first place, the government should do away with its tendency of allocating teacher quotas only to those schools that have access to political leaders. Only then will schools become ready to give up redundant quotas for teachers."
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