The School Education Department of J&K is facing a crisis of job availability. Among the total 55900 buildings, only 5894 are complete. The state has been unable to complete 10084 schools for more than a decade. The State has no money for constructing new schools. Meanwhile, SSA teachers are being sent on redundancy to other states. The government has no plan to fill the vacancies.
The Education Department has a catch-22 situation. Many of the government-run schools have too few teachers for the number of students. The ratio is so low that teachers outnumber students. According to the official statistics, most of the state’s schools have too few teachers. Ideally, the ratio should be thirty to one. In the state, the ratio should be thirty to forty. Achieving this ratio is crucial to the success of the department.
The School Education Department is evolving an online portal to record teacher performance and generate monthly performance reports based on learning outcomes. The State Administrative Council has approved the installation of bio-metric attendance devices in all Government schools. This will help in tracking the teachers’ attendance. This way, the Department will be able to identify absent teachers and implement disciplinary actions. The School Education Department has also embraced the erstwhile SSA teachers to create a grade-II cadre.
The School Education Department has a catch-22 situation with the disproportionate pupil-teacher ratio. The Department has a plethora of problems with its workforce. In some schools, teachers outnumber students. Even though this is not a common problem, official figures show that most of its schools have a very low pupil-teacher ratio. Those figures are pathetic and far below the normal range. But the situation is not getting any better.
While the School Education Department is in a catch-up with the state’s disproportionate pupil-teacher ratio, the government is taking steps to ensure that teachers are able to serve students in a safe environment. As of now, all Government schools have installed bio-metric attendance devices. This will help the Department monitor the attendance of its teachers and provide them with real-time data about student performance. There is an ongoing program in place to make sure that the Department of Education is as effective as it can be.
Ending Line
The School Education Department has a catch-22 situation. The disproportionate pupil-teacher ratio in the state means that teachers outnumber students in many schools. In these schools, the ratio of teachers is so low that the teachers outnumber the students. In some schools, it is even worse. Most of the schools in the state have a poor teacher-student relationship. Moreover, the disproportionate pupil-teacher ratio is a major challenge for the department.
