Nellore: Career Foundation Course introduced for students in English medium high schools has been causing unrest among the teachers as well as students.
The reason being the textbooks are different from the regular syllabus and both of them have to spend more hours in the school for coaching.
The Education wing adopted the micro schedule devised by Narayana institutions for the CFC. But the government teachers are not able to cope with the multi tasking such as the heavy workload and acquainting themselves with the subjects besides taking care of regular syllabus, all simultaneously. The teachers allege that students of rural areas are unable to understand the subjects being taught in English.
Also they have to go one hour before the school opening time and leave one hour after the closing of the school because the CFC is taught before and after the school hours.
Separate textbooks for Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and English are being supplied for CFC and they have nothing to do with books of state syllabus being supplied by State Council for Education Research and Training.
“For us it is extra two hours work and this is affecting the schedules of state syllabus. For students, there is no scope to participate in sports in the evening hours. The impact is already started showing and the students appear distraught with all work and no play,” a senior teacher said under the condition of anonymity.
He said weekly exams are held for CFC and the negative marks are further de-motivating the students. He said that students and teachers of Telugu medium schools are happy because CFC is not implemented in the schools.
Another issue the teachers are upset with is Comprehensive Monitoring Quality Assessment Programme introduced for Class X students of all high schools.
In this case also, teachers have to work extra hours without any additional remuneration and they are being held responsible for poor performance of students in the weekly tests.
One solace for the teachers is the CMQAP is part of regular syllabus but the students lose one mark for every wrong answer.
When contacted District Educational Officer M. Ramalingam said a proposal to give some incentives to the teachers working for additional hours is under active consideration by the government while responding to a question on the mood of the teachers.
Mr Ramalingam said Career Foundation Course is being implemented in 236 Zilla Parishad High Schools and CMQAP in all the 398 government high schools in the district.
