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Rationalisation of government schools in Haryana: No move to close any school, abolish posts of teachers, says minister
With protests started erupting against Haryana education department’s move to rationalise government schools and teaching staff, education minister said the objective is to maintain teacher-student ratio
With protests started erupting against Haryana education department’s move to rationalise government schools and the teaching staff, education minister Kanwar Pal on Monday said the objective of the rationalisation exercise is to maintain teacher-student ratio as per the Right to Education Act norms.
“We are trying to ensure that the prescribed student-teacher ratio is maintained in every school across the state...in some schools, the strength of teachers is not equivalent to the strength of students, while there are many schools having less number of students because of which teachers are teaching only two periods in a day,” the education minister said as reports trickled in about affected people opposing the move.
The education minister’s statement also comes in the backdrop of the August 13 order of the director-cum-special secretary of the school education under which the exercise to rationalise 105 government middle and high schools were started. The identified high, middle and primary schools will be merged into the nearby school available within 3 km.
While Yamunanagar district has the largest 22 schools to be rationalised followed by Kurukshetra (14), Mahendergarh and Rewari (10 each), Jhajjar (9), Bhiwani (8), Ambala (6), Charkhi Dadri and Gurugram (5 each).
Under this policy, the government middle schools having less than 20 students in classes 6 to 8 and government high schools having less than 25 students in classes 9 to 12 will be merged with nearest government middle/high/senior secondary school available within distance of 3 km.
Similarly, government middle schools having less than 10 students in classes 6-8 will be merged with nearest government middle/high/senior secondary schools.
As a result of this exercise, schools located within 1km distance in the same village/ward are going to be consolidated in the highest school, making them a single school unit with different campuses.
Now all primary and middle schools will be coeducation and teaching and non-teaching posts will be rationalised and redistributed on the basis of approved rationalisation criteria.
“Surplus staff will be transferred during transfer drive by following the approved surplus criteria,” the order says, which is at the root of protests in certain districts.
While the Model Sanskriti Schools have been kept out of this exercise, the dual head system will be discontinued. The elementary school headmasters if found in excess will be utilised to teach respective subjects by offering them post of TGT with all consequential benefits of their present post.
Officials said the matter regarding providing a requisite number of teachers to students by optimum utilisation of the infrastructure and human resources has been under consideration of the government for some time.
“The education department is executing the work regarding the transfer drive in a transparent and fair manner,” Kanwal Pal said, terming the reports of closure of schools and abolishing the posts as baseless.
“Some schools with low student strength have been merged with the school within the nearest 3 km radius. The department will neither close any school nor it will abolish the posts of teachers,” the education minister said.
