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The school education department is often seen as the black sheep in our present society. Some people have a negative view of the school education department without experiencing any issues themselves, relying solely on hearsay. This mentality has developed in our society, leading to the depreciation of the school education department.
In the school education department, teachers were once highly respected by society in the past, but nowadays, they are frequently targeted for ridicule in public perception. However, there is a system that controls them, and it is flawed. The system is ineffective due to a lack of streamlining by the department in different cadres. When discussing seniority and the streamlining of different cadres for promotion, everyone becomes selfish. They resort to court cases against each other, and the court often keeps everything on hold for years. Filing cases against each other is the reason that, over the past six or seven years, the department has been unable to promote teachers to higher grades. Recently, only a few teachers have been promoted.
Teachers were confined to school teaching for their entire careers, and only on the verge of retirement were they promoted to higher grades as retirement incentives. What more can we expect from them after their enthusiasm has waned? To solve this problem, the department introduced a limited departmental exam to accommodate young and energetic officers. This provision was included in the department’s new service rules of 2017, after restructuring and revamping procedures had been completed. However, some teachers sought court judgments, which kept the initiative in abeyance.
Some teachers are not capable of their positions because they were appointed by chance and not by choice; becoming a teacher was their last option. However, not every teacher should be blamed. Many teachers have dedicated their lives to imparting quality education.
In many departments, there are government employees who haven’t seen their office during their entire service. The department responsible for our health can keep proxy employees, the department responsible for good roads hardly assigns their employees to the field, the department responsible for law and order can make backdoor appointments, and there are many more loopholes in all departments that I cannot mention all at once. Yet, despite witnessing all these issues, all the blame falls on the teachers.
When election time approaches, everyone thinks it’s the responsibility of teachers. In most rural areas with limited teachers, if all the teachers are assigned to election duty, the schools will be closed for weeks because teachers have to attend training and follow all the formalities of conducting the election, which wastes their teaching days. One day, I asked an official why teachers are targeted for election duty. His reply was that other department employees are not as sincere as teachers in performing election duties. So why is our society ready to blame the teachers alone? Blaming the teachers may affect your future generation’s education.
Teachers are required to maintain strict attendance, but many politicians and department officials have kept some teachers in their attachments, even though there is limited teaching staff. Some schools in urban areas are overflowing with teachers, while most rural areas face a shortage of teachers according to their needs. Whenever teachers are transferred from schools facing a shortage of staff, and when the School Management Committee inquired about it, the department replied that it had been done through rationalisation. So, in the process of teacher deployment, the department needs to understand true rationalisation.
To improve the system in the department of school education, society’s involvement is needed along with the efforts of the teachers and the department or government.
Hoshika H. Sumi
Primary Teacher