English teachers in Punjab flunk language test
English teachers in Punjab flunk language test
Majority of Middle, High and Secondary Schools in Punjab are without teachers of English : Punjab Education Reforms Committee
Study the problem in depth, chalk out long term plan to fill up vacant posts of teachers of English, organize training programme to improve language skills
Ferozepur, June 27, 2015: The English school teachers in Punjab have been headlines during the last week when they flunked English language test and made glaring mistakes from tenses to spellings. Everything they wrote was wrong. Sample these are : ‘Leak of interest’, ‘Staff of our school was vacant’ and ‘Our school has situated remote area’
The board called these teachers for a meeting in Mohali town to know why more than 80,000 of the 3.5 lakh students of Class 10 failed to clear the English exam. It was a matter of grave concern that the replies given by the teachers projected on the screen were full of grammatical errors and lower standard of English, which signified that even teachers were not capable of giving good lessons of English to the students.
Right from Education Minister to senior education officers are very much worried about the poor results of English language and shortly organizing training of teachers.
While a good number of teacher’s community in Punjab is introspecting on this burning issue, it has put a big question mark on the working of government education department.
As per the sources, there are 2549 Middle, 1742 High and 1398 Secondary schools in Punjab but barring 300-400 schools, none other schools have teachers in English. The entire responsibility of teaching English and Social Study has been put on SS Masters, out of which 90 per cent SS Teachers, during their B.Ed. training, have not got the training of teaching in English. The most surprising factor is that during the last three decades, not even a single teacher in English has been recruited. During 2009-10, an advertisement for recruitment of 900 teachers of English was given and about 500 teachers were appointed but 80 per cent teachers were posted in Middle Schools. No doubt, SS Masters are teaching the English subject since long but none of the government has ever thought of separating the cadre of English and Social Study by inviting options.
As per the information, the Education Minister who arranged a class of teachers with less than 10 per cent results included the teachers of Hindi, Punjabi and Drawing Masters and they were teaching English only because of shortage of teacher. In case, the teachers who don’t have interest in teaching English are sent on training, then positive results could not be expected.
English subject has now become a major issue but in 10th class, 35,000 students were fail in Punjabi subject which is the mother-tongue of the State and students with 4 numbers in English, Social Study and 2 in Science and Math have been declared as passed just to reform in the final results.
It is a matter of record that thousands of posts of teachers are lying vacant since long in the Education Department in Punjab. The Budget Section of Education Department has also declared 72469 posts under Non-Plan Temporary Scheme, out of which financial sanction for 49802 for the year 2015-16 have been issued. It means that 22667 posts under this scheme are lying vacant which include 226 Principals, 716 Headmasters, 3374 Lecturer, 9219 Masters, 2071 Vocational Masters and 2021 posts of C&D cadre.
It is also pointed out that 40 per cent posts of Science teachers are lying vacant and in all, more than 35,000 posts including non-plan, permanent and other schemes are lying vacant.
When Hans Raj, spokesman of Punjab Education Reforms Committee was contacted, he said, there is a need to introspect jointly on the poor working of education department by teachers, parents and government. The government should ensure the recruitment of teachers, increase the standard of teaching, parents should extend cooperation to teachers and teachers too, should concentrate on their subjects, by leaving the use of mobiles applications.
Frankly speaking, having concerned over the declining standards of education at the primary and secondary levels, there is a need to chalk out a long-term plan to fill up the vacant posts of teachers of English, to improve their language skills.
The first task should be to study the problem in depth and then work out a crash course for the teachers of a long-term training programme for teachers of English.