Condemning the Congress Government’s decision to shift teachers arbitrarily from middle schools, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Thursday said that the move would have a most adverse effect on education services in the State.
“The State Government seemed to be playing with the future of poor students studying in the Government schools with Punjabi and Hindi learning suffering the most,” said the former education Minister and SAD spokesman Daljit Singh Cheema.
Cheema, giving details of how the Education Department had issued a letter by its District Education Officers wherein the schools’ heads had been directed to shift their surplus staff to the schools facing staff crunch, said that though the Department has used the word ‘surplus’, the schools that were asked to shift their teachers only had the required strength of six teachers.“Teachers of Science, Social Studies, Punjabi, Hindi, Arts and Craft and PTI are required in every school. If any teacher is shifted among them, there will be no alternate to teach his or her subject in that school,” said Cheema.
Cheema said that around 58 such teachers, who had been shifting from middle schools in Sangrur district, included teachers of various subjects including Punjabi (11), Hindi (10) Arts and craft (17), PTI (14) and Social Studies (four). There were no teachers left in 11 Government Middle schools to teach the students their mother tongue Punjabi, he alleged.
Asking the education department to stop experimenting with the future of students, Cheema said that the Government should hire new teachers immediately to address the problem of staff crunch in government schools.
“The government must hire teachers for Punjabi, Hindi and other important subjects in the first place, and then it should think about implementation of English medium project in government schools,” he said