Delhi govt schools blame unavailability of teachers for mid-term results

Delhi government’s Directorate of Education summoned all the zonal education officers and head of schools (HoS) where results were below average and discussed a course of action

Unavailability of teachers, irregular classes, and technical glitches in uploading results online are some of the reasons cited by several government schools in Delhi behind their poor mid-term results in classes 10 and 12. According to the Delhi government’s Directorate of Education (DoE), only 30% of class 10 students and 50% of class 12 students passed the mid-term exams conducted in September.

Anuj Gupta, a science student, in a classroom in absence of the Physics teacher, in New Delhi on August 2, 2017. (Burhaan Kinu/HT File Photo)

According to officials at Government Boys’ School, Karol Bagh, the classes remained irregular due to the “unavailability” of teachers. “There was no permanent mathematics teacher for class 10 till August-end in our school, so classes could not be held regularly. A post-graduate teacher (PGT) who teaches class 11 and 12 filled in and took some classes. Similarly, the PGT for English was appointed very late, due to which the classes were irregular,” an official at the school, who wished to remain anonymous, said.

Similarly, officials at another school in Jor Bagh, where a parent had helped the class 12 students complete the Physics syllabus last year because of the unavailability of teachers, also complained of a delay in the appointment of trained graduate teachers (TGTs), who are eligible to teach up to class 10, this time around. “After the promotion of many TGTs as PGTs, there occurs a shortage of permanent TGTs in the school for many subjects such as Hindi, English and mathematics. The guest teachers were assigned late and, hence, the classes for these subjects were interrupted till August,” an official said.

Sanjay Goel, director, DoE, accepted these problems. “Some schools have also approached us saying there were technical glitches while uploading marks online. They said the scores for practicals could not be uploaded, due to which the score of their students were below the pass-mark. However, they have added the practical marks in the hard copy of results handed to parents last month,” he said.

The DoE Monday summoned all the zonal education officers and head of schools (HoS) where results were below average and discussed a course of action. “All the zonal education officers have been asked to conduct surprise visits to schools under their jurisdiction and all HoS directed to prepare modules for mock tests and extra classes for students set to take the board-level exams. The HoS are also going to sit in the classes where a large number of students failed. We are expecting to improve the results in the pre-board exams, to be held in December,” Goel said.

Last year, only 31% students passed the class 10 pre-board exams, following which the DoE issued show-cause notices to as many as 120 schools. The results, however, improved to 69.32 % in the board exams.