Bihar intermediate results 2019 bring happiness for maligned teachers

The Bihar board intermediate results, which witnessed a phenomenal jump in pass percentage with an increase of nearly 36% in science stream and 27% overall in just around 10 months, has made one section justifiably happy in the state, apart from the students.

The school teachers are satisfied with this year’s intermediate results.Many of these school teachers were recruited through panchayati raj bodies during the Nitish Kumar regime.

Having faced all the flak for abysmal intermediate results in the last three years, the teachers now feel that in the poll season, it has washed off the stigma of incompetence, which often became a political tool in the hands of the opposition in the past to attack the quality of education in Bihar.

The sudden jump in number of students securing the first division (from 7% in 2018 to 42% in 2019) will also result in rich monetary dividends for female students, as each girl securing above 60% would get Rs 10,000 as per the state government’s policy.

Besides, the government aided institutions would get higher funds due to higher number of students securing first division in accordance with the state policy of performance-linked funding.

Battling the Bihar government in the Supreme Court over their demand for ‘equal pay for equal work’, judgment on which is reserved and may come any day, the teachers said the results have proved the doubting Thomases wrong once and for all and vindicated the 2017 Patna high court order in their favour.

The state government had challenged it in the Supreme Court.

“The first credit should go to the students and teachers. It is the teachers who taught in the classroom, set question papers and did evaluation. Technology and tactics come later,” said Kedar Nath, Pandy Bihar secondary teachers’ association president and MLC. “The Bihar board is just an examining body and it did well to give results early, as it could conduct the exam early,” he said.

Pandey said it was a fact that requisite classroom teaching was still not possible due to engagement of teachers in non-academic work and shortage of subject teachers, but still the teachers strived to give their best .

“The results have vindicated that and now at least teachers in general will not be the target of political rhetoric,” he added.

Taking a serious note of poor results in matric and intermediate exams in 2017, an angry government had announced compulsory retirement for ‘non-performing’ headmasters and teachers, though the action did not materialise after the government discovered huge shortfall of subject teachers in schools.

The scenario has not improved much on this count since then, but the results have.

Faced with huge shortage of teachers in key subjects in higher secondary schools for the last several years, Bihar government in May-June last year rolled out invitations to qualified unemployed youth to work as guest teachers on a fixed remuneration of Rs 1,000/day not exceeding Rs

25,000 a month, but the measure did not succeed much.

In Bihar’s government schools, students get less than half the time to cover their class

12 syllabus than their counterparts in schools affiliated to central board of secondary education (CBSE) and Indian Certificate of Secondary Education ICSE.

This also results in poor classroom attendance, as per the government’s own survey last year.

The secondary teachers’ association’s general secretary and former CPI MP Shatrughan Prasad Singh, presently camping in Begusarai for party nominee Kanhiya Kumar, said the results had exposed the “negative propaganda as part of conspiracy” against teachers, who work against stiff odds and still deliver. “The results of Bihar board were good till five years ago, but deteriorated due to endless experimentations in the last 3-4 years,” he said. “With the apex court order also likely soon, we hope teachers will get another reason to contribute more to education.”

First Published: Apr 01, 2019 18:43 IST