HSC teachers call off boycott, agree to conduct online exam

Teachers of the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) Information Technology (IT) called off their boycott on Tuesday to conduct the online IT exams scheduled on March 22, 23 and 25. HT reports.

Teachers of the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) Information Technology (IT) called off their boycott on Tuesday to conduct the online IT exams scheduled on March 22, 23 and 25.

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The Maharashtra Junior College IT Teachers Association, consisting of 1,800 teachers from 1,500 colleges across the state, including 250 Mumbai colleges, had declared a boycott over the exams on February 27.

The teachers met school education minister Rajendra Darda who accepted their demands, after which they withdrew their boycott. The government has agreed to provide salary grants to colleges for this subject and approvals to IT teachers.

None of the teachers had received approvals so far. This meant they were working on a minimum pay and the government did not maintain their records.

Jagdish Varkhad, deputy head of the association from Pune said, “Colleges hired teachers but the government has not given approvals. We have been teaching IT for over 10 years and were getting paid Rs4,000 a month, without any employee benefits.”

Varkhad said owing to the low pay, teachers would often quit. “Students suffer as they rarely have a consistent teacher throughout the year,’’ he said.

The teachers also demanded that while seeking admission for computer science branch of engineering, some seats be reserved for those students who have studied IT in Class 11 and 12.