Sarma urges teachers to impart quality education

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Jan 23: State Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has said that the quality of today’s teachers pales by comparison with their predecessors', and this is one of the reasons why students skip schools.

The education minister was addressing the gathering on the occasion of golden jubilee celebration of government Banikanta College of Teachers Education.

Sharma said that for a society to run, its education system has to be the backbone of growth. “The State or the country which lays emphasis on its students, teachers and education system as a whole is simply unstoppable when it comes to growth,” Sarma said, citing examples of India’s southern states.

Laying stress on continuous evaluation or monitoring of performance of students Sarma said that some schools are not following the process and there is no uniform distribution of teachers in schools. “There are about 1.60 lakh teachers working in about 40,000 elementary schools in the state. Due to lack of uniform distribution of teachers, the pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) is not balanced, resulting in degrading education. Even if there are surplus teachers in schools, number of pupils continues to decrease,” he said.

Sarma raised concern over the fall in quality of teachers and pointed out that even if there are sufficient number of teachers in a school, pupils refuse to come to school. “We can see a wage earner’s son is admitted in a government school against a private school with a lot of reluctance only due to lack of sufficient money, nowadays. This shows the continuous fall in quality of education in government schools,” he said.

Citing instances of certain schools in Barpeta and gaon where some of the TET-passed teachers hired people to teach in schools in their places, Sarma said that such incidents are unfortute. “Hired people are given a third of the salaries of the TET-passed and students in turn don’t recognize their actual teachers. The actual teachers remain only as guest teachers in those schools. Teachers are opting to side businesses for living,” Sarma said.

Sarma further said that teaching is not simply a medium to address the issue of unemployment. “Teaching comes with responsibilities to generate a bold and knowledgeable future generation,” he said, and added that the civil society, the government, media and society as a whole have to come together for a thriving education system. “People need to raise their voice against the continuous fall in quality of education in schools nearby. If the government and society resort to compromise on standard of education, Assam will never move forward,” Sarma added.