Telangana plan to rejig school staff gets flak

HYDERABAD: The Telangana government on Tuesday released guidelines to rationalise teaching staff in all state schools across districts based on enrolments at schools during the academic year 2019-20.
The move, however, has been resisted by teachers who have questioned the rationale of picking a pre-pandemic year as reference.
The government has now set up a committee for the task with the collector as chairman, while additional collector, chief executive officer of zilla parishad and project officer of Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA) are members. The district education officer is the member secretary.
“Surplus teachers shall be posted in vacancies notified through transfer,” read the GO Ms No. 25 issued on August 12 and made public on Tuesday. It further directed officials to ensure that this rationalisation did not create new posts or reduce the sanctioned ones.
The teachers, meanwhile, have asked the state to postpone the process until admissions for the current academic year was completed.
“It doesn’t make any sense to carry out rationalisation under the current circumstances. There are reports that many students from private schools are joining government ones this year. Further, once the schools physically reopen, the number of enrolments might go up further. So, how is the education department going to rationalise now using 2019-20? The process should be postponed,” said MLC A Narsiderddy.
Chava Ravi, general secretary, United Teachers Federation, added: “There are other problems as well. Teacher transfer cannot be carried out unless cadre is released as per newly formed districts.”