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No regular teacher in 34 Mewat middle schools

GURUGRAM: If ‘catch them young’ is mantra for an empowered education system, Haryana''s Mewat surely fails the test.

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Sumedha Sharma
Tribune News Service
Gurugram, November 28

If ‘catch them young’ is mantra for an empowered education system, Mewat surely fails the test. With no regular teacher in over 30 of its middle schools, 54 schools with single teacher, 212 schools without principal, the deficit of 3,000 teachers against 6,858 posts and student to teacher ratio as high as 110:1, the elementary education of the most-backward district of Haryana is in a shambles. 

According to the records of district elementary education office, there are 34 middle schools in district that don’t have a regular teacher. To keep the institution running and make children ‘sit’ during school hours, teachers from different primary schools are sent as a stop-gap arrangement.

“They had promised to upgrade our village middle school, but we do not even have one teacher for our children,” said a Panchayat member of Ameenabad village In Punhana block. 

“Every day some teacher from a nearby primary school comes to teach students. Kids from different classes are made to sit together. They are either made to recite tables all day along or on most days asked to open whichever book they want to open, but sit quietly. The children have not learnt anything and when they flunk exams we are blamed. The villagers are thinking of withdrawing their wards from school. We will write to the government to shut school and turn the building into a community centre for village weddings,” the panchayat member added.

Ironically, majority of these “teacher-less” schools are for girls. Mewat tops the list of school dropouts, especially girls. Seven years ago the reason cited was the lack of toilets or conservative parents. However, according to a recent survey by a local NGO many girls of Punhana dropped out citing school as “wastage of time” due to the lack of teachers. The areas affected include Punhana, Naheda, Paapda, Luhingakalan, Ameenabad, Jadoli, Singalheri, Nuh, Tauru and Sultanpur.

Afasana of Singalheri village says, “Till primary, my daughter was in a madrasa and I was excited when I got her admitted to a middle school as she was first girl in our family to make it to class VI. However, after a month her father made her quit school and had her join stitching classes as she would do nothing but chit-chat in school. There was no teacher in school. My husband caught her playing marbles with boys and that was end of her schooling. I wish there was somebody to teach children regularly.”

According to Nuh MLA Aftab Ahmed, “The Congress created a special cadre for teachers in Mewat and even started hiring but the BJP government shut its eyes to the acute teacher crunch in the area. They have not made any regular appointments here and the education system along with health sector is collapsing. CM Manohar Lal Khattar should publicly declare what he did for education in Mewat and what he plans to do or the villagers will be left with no choice but lock the schools that are proving to be useless.” 

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