Association for English Aspirants, Punjab (Primary Cadre) demands at least “One School, One English Teacher”

Government schools without English teachers, students lack strong foundation

Association for English Aspirants, Punjab (Primary Cadre) demands at least “One School, One English Teacher”

Ferozepur, August 21, 2016 :  The students in government schools lack strong foundation in important subject – English – which connects globally and compulsory in this competition era. The implementation of Right to Education to Education (RTE) Act in its real spirit could only be seen, to bring real improvements in our education system, if the required numbers of teachers are engaged instead of making stop-gap-arrangements by asking the other subjects’ teachers to teach the subject.

Peculiar position is that in thousands of government schools in Punjab there are only 866 Teachers of English Subject under the master cadre for 14,09,3878 students for classes VI to X – meaning thereby one teacher per 1314 students, whereas in the rest of the schools Social Sciences teachers are teaching English to the students. Even then, only 200 posts were advertised and 134 posts are still vacant.

Added here, sometime back, the Education Minister, Punjab, Dr. Daljit Singh Cheema had himself taken the class of those teachers at Mohali whose result in Matric Examination conducted in March’2015 was bad. This speaks itself the inefficiency on the part of government for not filling up the posts of English teachers. More-over, how does the government want cent percent pass when teachers who are basically Social S teachers are forced to teach grammar?

As per the information sought by one of the teacher through RTI to defend himself not to teach English on account of not having the required qualification to teach English subject, it has revealed that there are no instructions and provision to teach English by Social Study Masters and it is a stop-gap-arrangement at the school level.

The strong aspirants for the post of English teachers state that while making recruitment for the English teachers, the simultaneously promotion quota should be filled from the existing staff irrespective of the subject, provided one fulfills the requisite qualification of English as elective subject in BA or teaching subject during the B.Ed.

Around 13 teachers – Sherpal of Mansa and others, have moved to the Court  vide Civil Writ Petition under article 226/227 of the Constitution of India with a prayer for issuance of writ in the nature of mandamus directing the Education Department to promote the them as Masters/Mistress in English subject in schools as other similarly placed E.T.T. Teachers are being considered for promotion in other subjects like Punjabi, Hindi, Sanskrit, Social Studies etc. but case of petitioners is not being considered for promotion wrongly and illegally.

One of the aspirant for the post of English Master said, in all 11364 posts of Masters/Mistress are lying vacant in different subjects and as per service rules JBT/ETT teachers are having 15% for promotion and total 2125 cases were called for promotion from ETT to Master and in subject of English there are 231 posts which are lying vacant but no case for promotion was called and from year 2000 onwards number of ETT teachers had been promoted as Masters/Mistress in different subjects like Hindi, Punjabi, Maths, Science, SST etc. but no person having qualification for promotion as English Master has been promoted despite  having qualifications for promotion as English Master/Mistress as there is no promotion quota fixed so far.

Another aspirant for promotion Parvinder Singh – known for imparting moral education to the students in various schools in addition to his duties – and representing Association for English Aspirants Punjab (Primary Cadre) said, there should be at least one English teacher in all the 6282 schools but very unfortunate that no teacher has been appointed since the Independence of India till 2007.  Only 813 teachers were appointed in 2008 and 1436 English teachers under SSA – a centre sponsored scheme in 2010.

He further said, Social Sciences masters are teaching English in government school where there no combination of SS and English language. Moreover, there is no promotion channel for primary school teachers to promote as English Master like other teachers of other subjects – SS, Math, Hindi and Punjabi.

Another teacher on anonymity said, the government needs to recruit subject teachers in middle schools as the poor and needy students in middle schools need strong foundation on the subjects and only then they could compete with their counterparts in this competitive era.