1 teacher for schools with 30 kids

Hyderabad: Government primary schools in Telangana with fewer than 30 students will now have just one teacher. This means if the teacher is absent, the students will have nothing to do.

Also, government primary schools will not have a headmaster/mistress unless the strength crosses 150. One of the existing teachers will act as the headmaster/mistress.

As per the new staffing pattern rules for government schools released by the TS government, government primary schools with less than 30 enrolled students shall have only one teacher. And there is no backup provided in case the teacher doesn’t turn up for work.

“About 50 per cent of all government primary schools have enrollment of less than 30 students and they will all become single-teacher schools now. Every primary school should have at least three teachers. How will they get quality education?” asked Ravi Chava, general secretary, Telangana State United Teachers’ Federation.

Teachers say that such schools will have to remain closed whenever the teacher is absent or takes casual leave.

In the staffing pattern rules, TS principal secretary Ranjeev Acharya said it had been decided to post just one teacher to low enrollment primary schools to prevent them from shutting down and because of the large number of vacancies.

When asked, Deputy Chief Minister Kadiam Srihari said the government would revisit the staffing pattern after fresh recruitment of teachers. However, that is not expected to happen anytime soon.

Also, the government has decided to shut down parallel English medium sections in government schools with enrollments of less than 50 students. Many government high schools have parallel Telugu and English medium sections.

This despite Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao saying that teaching in government schools should be in English. But other media running parallel, such as Urdu, Hindi, Kannada etc. will continue with whatever numbers they have.