GUWAHATI, Oct 28 � Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi will personally write to the headmasters of the State�s schools to ensure discipline in the matter of attendance of teachers as well as students.
This comes in view of the highly irregular attendance of both teachers and students in many of the schools, including the venture institutions.
Revealing this at a press conference today, Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the prevailing situation was a major stumbling block in improving the educational environment and that more than Government intervention the teachers had to play their role towards that end.
�Recently I visited seven venture schools in Morigaon district and not a single teacher was present in any of the schools. During my visits to different areas I have also witnessed that a large number of students never arrived in time, with students entering schools at any time between 9 am and 11 am,� Sarma said.
�The Chief Minister will personally write letters to the headmasters on November 11 urging them to ensure timely attendance by the teachers and students,� he added.
The Minister said that the Government was not in favour of taking any punitive action on the respective school managements for poor attendance initially, as it could cause unnecessary complications.
�We want to follow the path of prayer and petition, and believe that we can make them aware of their responsibilities through persuasion�we generally talk about teachers grievances but it should be remembered that students too have rights which need to be protected in the greater interest of education,� he said.
Sarma also said that the Government would soon appoint 4,000 block-level cluster coordinators (BLCCs) under the Sarva Shiksha Abhijan Mission for monitoring the schools. �Each coordinator will keep surveillance over 30-odd schools, covering all the LP and MP schools in the process,� he added.
Sarma revealed that a total of 3.87 lakh teachers' eligibility test (TET) forms had been collected by candidates for the ensuing test, the break-up for lower primary (LP) and upper primary (UP) being 2.44 lakh and 1.43 lakh respectively. Of these 3.65 lakh have submitted their applications.
�We hope to hold the examination by mid-November and declare the results by January 10 next year. The first phase of appointments should be over within March,� he said.
The posts of 12,000 government schoolteachers and 35,000 fixed-pay teachers will be covered from among the successful TET pass-outs. �Appointment to the government schoolteachers' posts had been under a stay from the Gauhati High Court but now we have fulfilled almost all the conditions laid down by the court and we expect to get the court's approval for the recruitment,� Sarma said.
Interestingly, of the posts to be fulfilled from the ensuing TET, none are in district or subdivisional headquarters, Sarma said, adding that it was a need-based exercise.
The process of provincialization of the services of teachers of non-provincialized (venture) schools is also set to start, and the first batch of teachers should have their services provincialized by April next year, Sarma said, adding that the entire process involving one lakh teachers in 30,000 venture schools and to be implemented phase-wise should be over by 2015.
�This is an attempt at decentralizing the inspection process for the 1.5 lakh schools of the State,� he said.
The Government will also start in December the screening process for providing salary to LP and ME teachers serving without salary between 1991 to 2001.
