Teachers from various schools associated with the Punjab School Education Board’s (PSEB) have appealed to the board to replace online submission of continuation form with offline submissions citing technical issues.
For over a month, the educators have been urging the board officials to allow offline submissions, as was the case until last year.
The teachers have also claimed that there are certain legal issues involved in this matter.
Bhuvnesh Bhatt, general secretary of School Sangh Punjab, explained that in 2020, the union members had filed a court case against the board’s new performa, which required schools to submit affiliation details up to March 2021.
“The case is still pending in the high court and yet the board has changed the submission method without the court’s approval or consulting the petitioners,” said Bhatt.
Addressing technical issues, Bhatt said: “Different student IDs for classes 10 and 12 create duplicate entries in the online system, as the same staff and facilities are used for both. This prevents us from submitting the form. Furthermore, building and fire safety serial numbers are the same for both levels, making it impossible to complete both the forms.”
The union members said that the notice to submit the form online was released on July 20 and a demand letter to make the process offline was submitted at the PSEB office on July 21.
{{/usCountry}}The union members said that the notice to submit the form online was released on July 20 and a demand letter to make the process offline was submitted at the PSEB office on July 21.
{{/usCountry}}“Upon receiving no response, we submitted the request on August 26 and then again on September 9. We also met Prem Kumar, the vice-chairman of the board, who assured us of a resolution. As he did not respond on time, we again visited the PSEB office on September 26 and September 30,” Bhatt said.
“We were assured to get a solution to this issue within three days, but nothing has been done so far,” lamented Bhatt.
The PSEB has not yet officially responded to their request.
The deadline for submitting the continuation form is October 8. After that, schools will have to pay double the fee for each student as a penalty to the board.