Govt schools grapple with lack of subject teachers

Vikas Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 6

Despite a number of reminders by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to ensure availability of subject teachers at the secondary and upper-primary levels in government schools, nothing much has changed in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

According to the School Quality Education Index-2019, the percentage of secondary schools with teachers for all core subjects was 9 per cent in 2015-16 and increased to 10.8 per cent in 2016-17. As per norms, teacher recruitment is based on the pupil-teacher ratio and the subject-specific requirements of the states/union territories. Each school should have a minimum of five subject teachers specifically for the core subjects — English, language, mathematics, science and social science.

The report revealed that apart from J&K, other states/union territories with poor percentage of subject teachers were Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Puducherry, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Bihar.