- Kamrup (M) education officials become sterner to check teacher absenteeism
- Officials say that quality of education gets affected due to irregular teachers
- Authorities conduct regular checks in schools and irregular teachers are first given a warning
- Then their pay is cut and they are served show cause notice
- Thereafter they are ultimately suspended
- At least five teachers were issued show cause notices in Kamrup (M) in the past one month
- Capacity building of teachers on the cards with three-day non-residential teachers’ training
- To fill vacant posts, 168 primary teachers were appointed after the first phase of Guntosav
The Kamrup (Metro) district education officials have served show cause notices to at least five teachers during the past one month for being irregular, informed officials.
District elementary education officer (DEEO), Buli Gogoi Bhuyan, said that they have increased their efforts to continuously keep a check on absentee teachers, especially those who are repeat offenders.
“It is the students who ultimately suffer from the absenteeism of teachers and the quality of education in such schools gets affected,” said Bhuyan adding that the authorities conduct regular checks in different schools across the district and irregular teachers are given a warning first.
Officials said that there are a few authorized leaves which the teachers can avail after which their salary is cut as per the number of holidays taken.
“If the teachers still continue to remain absent, we then issue show cause notices to them following which they are ultimately suspended,” said Bhuyan.
The state education department has of late been laying a lot of emphasis on providing quality education to all children, especially in government schools.
Training and capacity building of teachers
The education department has also decided to build the capacity of teachers by conducting a three-day non-residential teachers’ training on “learning outcomes” this month. Under this, resource persons will be appointed who will cover every subject in order to improve the quality of teaching in schools, said district programme officer, Suranjana Goswami.
The officials also said that after the first phase of evaluation of schools under Gunotsav, it was found that 61 primary schools were running on single teachers in the district. However currently out of these, 42 schools have been provided with one additional teacher.
Additionally, in order to fill vacant posts of teachers, 168 primary teachers were appointed in the district after the first phase of Guntosav, taking the total primary teachers in Kamrup (Metro) to 2,847 in 708 schools.
In December 2016, state education minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, had set a target of recruiting over 13,000 teachers to fill maximum number of vacancies all over the state in 2017.
The state government recruited around 14,000 teachers in 2017 according to education department officials. The recruitments were conducted in two phases in which 8,000 posts of additional teachers were filled in the first phase and another 6,000 teachers were recruited during the second phase.