Under heat, Education dept to tweak school categorisation

Under pressure from teacher organisations, the education dept can make changes in the categorisation of the schools based on accessibility. A hint in this regard was given by the secretary of School Education Bhupinder Kaur Aulakh to a delegation of the Rajakeeya Shikshak Sangh (RSS) when it met her on Monday. The delegation comprising of the President of the RSS, K K Dimri, Vice President Mukesh Bahuguna and General Secretary Sohan Singh Majila also met the Chief Secretary Utpal Kumar Singh on the day and lodged its strong protest on the categorisation of the schools.

The CS assured the delegation to look into the grievances of the teachers.

The General Secy of the organisation, S S Majila said that in the new categorisation, the department has divided more than 20K schools into only 2 groups; easy to access ( Sugam) and hard to access (Durgam). He explained that the department has used a criteria of assigning points based on many parameters and graded the schools into Sugam and Durgam.

“ In the present categorisation the school with only five points is clubbed with school with 31 points into Durgam category. Naturally there is a big difference between the facilities available in these schools. We want that the state government should direct the department to cancel present categorisation and introduce sub categories into the Sugam and Durgam categories,’’ he said.

Apart from introducing sub categories in the Sugam and Durgam , the teachers are also demanding that the schools with collective points of 40 should be put into Durgam category.

The teachers are annoyed as they claim that large number of schools which earlier were in Durgam category have been now placed in easy to access category which has ensured that the services of teachers posted to many years in Durgam schools would get nullified and treated as Sugam postings. Such teachers would now get transferred to Durgam schools.

The department after much deliberation completed the process of categorisation of the schools based on which the process of transfers of teachers would start.

Protests erupted in the department which employees more than 75K teachers after the list of categorisation was uploaded into the website of the department.

The  Govt has implemented a Transfer Act- 2017 for the government employees and had directed all departments to constitute transfer committee. It has also directed the departments to complete the process of categorisation of work places.