*Several lecturers drawing salaries with negligible enrolment
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Mar 14: Startling revelations have come to the fore vis-à-vis utilization of human resources in the Higher Secondary Schools of Jammu and Kashmir during a comprehensive study conducted by the School Education Department. The disclosure has clearly established that political and bureaucratic interventions always ruled the roost in this department at the cost of studies of lakhs of students particularly in tough terrain districts.
This study was conducted on the directions of Commissioner Secretary, School Education Department, Shaleen Kabra in order to ascertain the staffing pattern of each Higher Secondary School especially in the wake of problem of large number of attachments in various schools particularly in Jammu province.
During this exercise, staff position and enrolment of all the 300 Higher Secondary Schools in Jammu division was assessed by the Directorate of School Education and startling revelations have come to the fore during the study, which clearly established that staffing and posting of lecturers in the province has been absolutely irrational and certainly not taking the interest of the students into consideration.
Rather, staffing and posting of lecturers in the Higher Secondary Schools was being done only with the political and bureaucratic considerations and at the cost of studies of lakhs of students with the sole purpose of providing comfortable postings to the blue-eyed and influential lecturers.
According to a confidential communication managed by EXCELSIOR from School Education Department, Civil Secretariat, Jammu, 69 subjects are being taught in 134 different Higher Secondary Schools with a total enrolment of nearly 20,000 students without sanctioned posts. Though there was focus on attachment of lecturers of these subjects in these schools but the vital aspect of getting required number of posts sanctioned from the competent authority was never taken seriously.
The outcome of non-sanctioning of posts and running the schools by way of attachments was seen recently when all the attachments were detached as majority of these nearly 20,000 students suffered a lot due to this step. “At many places such admissions were done only to create posting avenues for the particular lecturer due to favoritism”, the communication said.
Mentioning that over the years no importance was given to pupil-teacher ratio, the document said that due to non-serious approach towards this another vital aspect the ratio was worst in many districts thereby affecting the studies of lakhs of students.
English subject has the higher pupil-teacher ratio of 1:349 (one teacher for 349 students) followed by education subject (1:256), Hindi (1:178), Chemistry (1:179), Physics (1:163) and Urdu (1:127). On the contrary, electronics subject has lowest ration of 1:7 only. Ensuring proper pupil-teacher ratio was also ignored in order to encourage attachments as in many schools having abnormally high ratio attachments are necessitated.
Reasi district has the worst ratio in the entire Jammu division in almost all the major subjects. In this district, ratio in English is 1:1048 while as in Hindi the same is 1:507. Similarly, 1:609 ratio is in Education, 1:702 in Botany and 1:390 in Chemistry.
During the study, it also came to the fore that no consideration was ever given to enrolment of students while making postings. This can be gauged from the fact that for less than 10 students each in Higher Secondary Schools of Muthi, Gandhi Nagar, Jullaka Mohalla, Dablehar, Bhalwal and Bakshi Nagar, one lecturer each is posted in Botany as well as in Zoology.
However, for as many as 146 students in Higher Secondary School, Assar, 122 in HSS Billawar, 312 in Marwah, 138 in Surankote, 128 in HSS Gambir Moghlan, 349 in HSS Gool and 174 in HSS Mahore, no lecturer is posted. This indicates that students of difficult districts always remained worst sufferers of political and bureaucratic interventions in the functioning of the School Education Department.
As many as 51 lecturers of Botany are posted in Jammu district for just 2164 students while as for 4799 students of Botany in Doda, only 17 lecturers have been posted. The situation is more alarming in Kishtwar where only 4 lecturers have been posted for 3078 students of Botany. In Ramban, there is only one lecturer for 2002 students studying Zoology.
Another shocking aspect, which came to fore during the study, reveals that around 30 lecturers are drawing salaries against sanctioned posts with zero enrolment of students. Similarly, around 50 lecturers are drawing salaries against sanctioned posts having enrolment up to 10 students only.
According to the sources, similar situation is prevailing in many districts of Kashmir province.
“The new dispensation has taken this scenario seriously and Education Minister, Naeem Akhtar is minutely assessing this startling data in order to take corrective steps so that for the comfortable posting of the influential lecturers the students are not made to suffer”, sources said.
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