1,500 primary schools wait for a teacher in Punjab

CHANDIGARH: Though education is every child''s fundamental right, in Punjab nearly 20,000 children are deprived of it even after having paid their fees.
The reason: The schools do not have a single teacher available.
There are at least 1,500 government primary schools in the state villages which are sans teachers. Many of students have not gone to school even once in this session.
And with little hope of finding a teacher around, their chances of attending classes seem bleak enough.
Sources say most of these schools are located in the border areas in Ferozepur and Amritsar districts, where teachers are reluctant to get posted.
Even if they are posted, the teachers seldom are on duty, added sources.
While education department''s recent rationalisation of postings has ensured that some of the schools get at least one teacher, the problem is compounded with an increasing number of vacancies, created after retirement of teachers.
At present, the department requires at least 6,000 vacancies to be filled in 13,000 primary schools in the state. With the state government unlikely to lift the ban on fresh recruitments, the education department has prepared a proposal to empower zila parishads to get teachers on contract for primary schools.
The idea is to pick up local qualified teachers so that they have no hesitation in working in their respective region. "It would be financially and administratively more viable to hire locals for the task," said a senior officer.
Moreover, after the last two rounds of large-scale appointments of teacher during the Beant Singh and the Badal government''s tenure, which subsequently sparked off a controversy and uproar, the government proposes to avoid filling up the 6,000 vacancies in one go.
Meanwhile, the state government has embarked on a programme to introduce computer education in 100 schools for which Rs six crore has been sanctioned.
Each school would have at least 10 computer sets each at an estimated cost of Rs six lakh each. The new proposal has been mooted after the government''s experiment of granting computer education through a private agency, NIIT, had failed to make much headway.
The new scheme is likely to commence in about six months.
The state government''s commitment to bring about improvement in the school education falls flat as it has failed to utilise the entire grant of Rs 113 crore granted under the Centrally sponsored Sarv Shiksha Abhiyaan last year.
As it could make use of Rs 80 crore of the total grant, the current year''s project under the Abhiyan has been pegged at Rs 148 crores adding the backlog of un-utilised funds.