Telangana to evaluate teachers, give them incentives

Hyderabad: The Telangana state government wants to train teachers and introduce performance evaluation and incentives across all schools in the state to improve education standards. This, even as teachers are annoyed over the survey conducted by the government in schools. Teachers say that a sample survey in about one-sixth of the government schools in Telangana cannot reveal the entire picture.

K. Venugopal, president of the Telangana Teachers’ Federation, said it is the government’s habit to blame teachers for the faults in the education system. “If a student is unwilling to study, the teacher is blamed. If school toilet is defunct, the teacher is blamed. Teachers are easy scapegoats for every problem in the education system,” he said. Training programmes for teachers were recently initiated by the Telangana government.

“If a teacher is performing well, we will give him or her incentives. But it doesn’t mean we will punish teachers who are not performing. We want to have a positive outlook towards teachers,” education minister Jagadishwar Reddy had said.

But, officials in the school education department are not too happy.

“Teachers in government schools are paid premium salaries but they do not take interest in their work because there is no accountability. The government cannot remove them from service even if half the students in the high schools don’t know basic arithmetic,” a senior official said.