GUWAHATI, Nov 26 - The government is mulling a new policy that will disallow transfer of teachers in the middle of the academic year. Currently, transfer of teachers has been put on hold and only mutual transfers are allowed.
Education Minister Siddhartha Bhattacharya said from the next academic session the government will not allow transfer of teachers in the middle of the term.
�Mid-term transfer of teachers affects the students. In some schools there are only one subject teacher. The students stand to suffer for the rest of the year, which we cannot allow anymore,� the minister told The Assam Tribune.
Under the new policy, the government will allow transfers only at one time of the year � during the annual break at the end of the academic year.
Moreover, the minister said, the government was also contemplating on having a minimum fixed term for the postings. Rationalisation of teaching staff has been one of the biggest challenges of the government.
Even though the average student-teacher ratio in the State is healthy (in 2018, it was 19:1 for Class IX to Class XII and 26:1 for Class VII and below), schools in far flung areas are reeling under shortage of teachers. In posh areas, schools have teachers in excess.
Education department officials say teachers are reluctant to serve in rural areas and �political requests� have been compounding the problem further.
According to a 2018 report, 24.97 per cent lower primary schools and 22.73 per cent upper primary schools in the State were running with adverse pupil-teacher ratio.
Following the Gunotsav exercise, the State government has initiated the process of rationalisation of teaching staff. As part of the exercise, this time TET has been divided into seven zones. The candidates appearing in one zone will not be engaged in districts of other zone. Further, after engagement, he or she will not be transferred to districts of other zone and the department will not entertain application requesting transfer to any district of a zone.
According to RTE, a healthy student-teacher ratio is 1:30.
