Teachers paid meagre salary

KOZHIKODE: Despite the order of the High Court in 2012 to CBSE/ICSE Boards to enforce a condition with immediate effect that schools seeking affiliation should pay a minimum monthly salary of Rs 10,000 to teachers of all unaided schools, they are yet to receive a decent salary.

Teachers’ organizations say there are schools where the pay is as low as Rs 4,000. The court had ordered that a minimum salary of Rs 10,000 to primary and middle school teachers, Rs 15,000 for secondary school teachers and Rs 20,000 to senior secondary teachers be paid. An additional amount was to be paid to headmasters/principals of all unaided schools in the State.

Urmila Krishnan, principal of a leading CBSE school said: “For the last five years I’ve not had a raise. Since our school lacks  sufficient staff or a union to protest the inhumanity shown to us, our voices are being suppressed. Even the cleaning staff in private firms get more than what we get here”, she added.

“Only around 25 per cent of unaided schools in the State have implemented the hike in salary scale”, said Kerala Unaided School Teachers and
Staff Union (KUSTSU) State Secretary, Venu Kakkattil.   

“More than 3,500 schoolteachers working in the Malabar region in the unaided sector are being trapped by managements who pay them very low salaries, yet show inflated sums in salary records”, he added.

Elaborating on the point Venu said: “Unless fair wages are paid to both teaching staff and non-teaching staff, unaided private schools will not get quality staff which will affect the coaching and in turn the educational standards”, he said.

The region has in the last one decade witnessed dozens of protests by the teachers’ organizations. “While teachers work like slaves, managements extract huge sums as admission fee from students”, he added.