Hyderabad: Activists have pointed out that there are a number of government schools that have an excess number of teachers, leading to a violation of the Right to Education Act.
In some schools, teachers outnumber students. The Mancherial Mandal Parishad primary school, has six teachers for only 26 students and the Zilla Parishad High School, Tekula Basthi, eight teachers for 60 students. In the ZPHS Shanti Khani, there are six teachers for 25 students.
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 lays down the pupil teacher ratio (PTR) for primary schools at 30:1 and for upper primary school at 35:1.
The Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) framework stipulates that the PTR at the secondary level should be 30:1. According to the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) the PTR at the national level for elementary schools is 24:1 and for secondary schools it is 27:1.
Teachers associations have said that the government should adjust teachers by way of rationalisation. General secretary, Telangana State United Teachers Federation, Chava Ravi said, “This situation is the result of the government’s failure. In some schools, students are more, and teachers are less. Some other schools have more teachers while the number of students is low. The government should adjust the teacher-student ratio.”
Right to Education activist R. Venkat Reddy said, “The Gowlipura Ayodhyanagar school strength was 70 before three teachers joined the school. After counselling, two more teachers were added. This is a gross violation of the RTE Act. According to Section 26, vacancies shall not exceed 10 per cent and centralised planning sometimes results in zero-teacher schools.’’
He said transfer of teachers should be planned with rationalisation. The planning process should be done only during holidays. Relieving teachers from schools with zero teachers should be non-negotiable.
“The teachers and their requirements should be planned properly. Due to bad planning, there are more children in some schools with no teachers and in other schools there are more teachers and less children,” he said.
