2011 proves tough for district education department

Updated on: Monday, January 02, 2012

The 2011 year proved tough for the district education department. The efforts to recruit teachers in government primary and upper primary schools after the declaration of TET results proved insufficient as the department could fill only 107 posts against the requirement of 2,500 teachers. The delay in distribution of free books (up to upper primary level) also hampered studies for most part of the year.

It may be mentioned here that Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a national flagship programme to provide quality elementary education to all children in the age group of 6-14 years through a time-bound approach, forms the basis for implementation of Right To Education (RTE) Act that calls for free and compulsory education to children in that age group.

Basic shiksha adhikari Suryabhan said the process of inviting applications for the recruitment of teachers in government primary schools is on and hopefully, adequate number of teachers (as per requirement) would be ready to serve in the next academic session.

Similarly, the establishment of primary and upper primary schools as per the objective of RTE Act would be also completed to meet the norm, he added.

As per records of basic education department, there are 1,032 primary schools and 352 upper primary schools in the district. The officials of basic education department also admit that addition of new schools particularly in the urban belt is a difficult task due to non-availability of land.

According to the norms, there should be a government-run primary school for a population of 300 at a distance of every one kilometre, and an upper primary school for a population of 800 at every two kilometres.

However, if the records of education departments are to be believed, the girls of 381 villages in the district have to cover a distance of more than five kilometres to get education of upper primary level while the girls of 963 villages cover this distance to get secondary level education.

There are 1,289 villages in the district with 2,14,280 boys and 1,67,420 girls at primary level. The number of upper primary students is 1,61,231 (91,198 boys and 70,033 girls) in these villages. Besides, there are 1,34,886 students (74,322 boys and 60,564 girls) of secondary classes.

Times of India

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