Hyderabad: A government-run primary school was closed for the day on Saturday since the teacher took medical leave on the outskirts of the city in Ranga Reddy district.
The school has 10 students from Classes I to VII. Usually, when the teacher is on leave, there should be a substitute teacher from a nearby government school. Due to a lack of teachers, no teacher was sent from any nearby institution.
This is not the only case in the state; there are around 7,000 schools which run with single teachers, out of 19,000 primary schools that exist, according to the Unified District Information System for Education (U-DISE).
The current teacher-student ratio that the state education department maintains is 1:30. But many schools do not even have 30 students. As a result, the single teacher has to maintain the students belonging to different classes on a single platform. This turns out to be a major challenge for the teacher.
A headmaster from the Ranga Reddy district said, “It is a major challenge for the single teacher run schools, because, though the strength is less, the students in the school belong to different classes and the teacher has to manage to teach everyone, according to their syllabuses and standards in the short time that they have.”
A teacher, who runs a single teacher primary school, said, “I am not availing of my casual leaves considering that the children would be left alone, but we cannot help it when it is a medical emergency. Despite informing about arrangement of alternative teachers, the Mandal Education Officers are also helpless as there is no staff. Left with no choice, the teachers are forced to shut the schools.”
When a single teacher in those schools is on leave, the mandal education officer (MEO) or a neighbouring school headmaster should be informed so that they could depute an alternative teacher, but none of these neighbouring schools have surplus teachers nor are they in a position to send a replacement.
There is a shortage of 22,000 working teachers in the state and the last teacher recruitment took place back in 2012. Though there were 16,000 vidya volunteers arranged on temporary basis, it did not solve these problems, Mr Chava Ravi, general secretary, Telangana State United Teachers Federation said.
In single-teacher-run schools, two classes are often clubbed and taught at the same time in one period and the other students would be given class work to do. When contacted, the district education officials were unavailable for comment.
