Teacher Shortage

There is bad news from Assam’s education sector: even as issues related to the enrolment of students in government and provincialised schools, as well as the dropout rate in the state, have become a major cause of concern, it has come to light that a large number of posts of teachers have been lying vacant, mainly in the secondary and higher secondary schools. As reported prominently on the front page of the Sunday edition of this newspaper, the government has informed the ongoing budget session of the State Legislative Assembly that altogether 11,793 posts of teachers in as many as 4,529 secondary and higher secondary schools are currently lying vacant across the state. Of these, in the general areas alone, as many as 4368 posts of science teachers, 5185 art teachers, and 1004 Hindi teachers have been lying vacant in secondary schools. In contrast, 71 posts of mathematics teachers, 121 of English teachers, and 13 of Hindi teachers are lying vacant in the higher secondary schools in the general areas. The scenario is even more alarming in the Sixth Schedule districts, where, in the HS level alone, 39 posts of mathematics teachers, 49 English teachers, and 58 Hindi teachers have been lying vacant. At a time when several efforts have been made to ensure that students get enrolled and attend classes regularly, the shortage of teachers amounts to gross injustice being meted out to innocent students, who have been suffering for no fault of theirs. What is also equally disturbing is that posts of a sizable number of teachers have not been provincialised in the true sense of the term. A section of teachers has been kept as ‘tutors’; some others have been considered as ‘contractual’ teachers, thus being deprived of salary commensurate with their work. Moreover, though a section of teachers has been officially declared as government employees, what they have been given in the name of salary is much less than even that of a daily wage. What the situation probably calls for is an intervention by the court of law.