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Ludhiana | Exams at doorstep, mentors caught up in non-teaching duties
The teachers were appointed as block mentors in Ludhiana to assist the state education department in conducting training seminars, holding quiz competitions, conducting exams etc
: With second-term examinations at the doorstep, the government schools have been pulling out all the stops to fill in the gap created by the absence of subject teachers, who were appointed as block mentors (BM) by the local education department.
The scenario has however left students at the suffering end with their final examinations close at hand.
The teachers were appointed as block mentors to assist the state education department in conducting training seminars, holding quiz competitions, conducting exams, holding lectures at other schools in their respective blocks and assisting in teachers training programmes, along with other tasks assigned by the department.
Each of the 19 blocks in the district has a block mentor for each subject, including English, Maths, Science, Punjabi, Social Science and Hindi. The BMs are headed by district mentors, who are the subject experts.
While block mentors for Hindi and Punjabi have been instructed to handle operations of the schools in the respective blocks, sitting in their home schools; the teachers appointed as BMs for Science, English and Mathematics, being occupied with office work of their department, don’t show up in their own schools, which is majorly affecting the studies of the students.
As per the orders of the former state education secretary, the schools were to get the substitute teachers in absence of the block mentors and district mentors for the smooth functioning of the schools.
A principal of a Government Senior Secondary School said, “It is not fair that even near the final exams, these teachers are not turning up to take their classes. Science, Maths and English are among the key subjects and it becomes difficult for other teachers, which are already less in number according to the students’ ratio, to adjust the lectures of the BMs too.”
Hiring substitute teachers with the help of PTAs
Surprisingly, in absence of the subject experts, who remain busy in the departmental work instead of delivering their teaching job, the schools heads are left with no option but to hire teachers by consulting Parents Teachers Associations (PTA), adding to out-of-pocket expenditure of schools.
“Since we are not getting substitutes and the BMs appointed continued to remain absent for long, we have hired teachers with the help of PTAs and are also taking the help of retired teachers volunteers to prepare the students for their board exams,” said a principal of a government school.
Another school head, who has a BM for Hindi in the school, said despite being present in the school, the teacher remains busy with paperwork or the task assigned by the education department and hardly gets time to take her classes.
A senior official in the education department said while many schools have provided substitute teachers, those who didn’t get the substitutes are due to no new appointments by the government.
“Many court cases of the candidates are pending with the courts and thus even after a teacher retires, it becomes difficult to appoint a substitute there,” said an official.
