Representatives of teachers have condemned the transfer of teachers to distant areas in the name of rationalisation and demanded the government to formulate a new rationalisation policy after taking stakeholders in confidence.
A body of teachers, the Educators Association (EA) termed the existing policy in contravention with international standards.
EA President Malik Amjad Mahmood, EA General Secretary Dr. Abdul Razzaq Niazi, and other office-bearers including Rashid Abbasi, Akhyan Gul Tahir, Ejaz Khokhar, Raja Basharat Iqbal, Muhammad Asif Kashmiri, and others expressed these views while talking to The Express Tribune at the Express Forum on Monday.
The officials said that the schools were already shut for the past six months due to the coronavirus lockdown owing to which the admission process has been affected too. They added that now as the educational institutions are expected to be reopened soon, the government should focus to make them better for teachers and students and concentrate on the enrolment drive. However, EA president expressed that it was imprudent to transfer the educators to schools located in far-flung areas and that too forcibly, without any consultation.
The participants were of the view that shuffling and transfers on a frequent basis had created uncertainty among the teachers while it would affect the academic activities too.
They commented that the policy of rationalisation was an anti-education policy and against the ground realities.
“It is totally unjust to deploy only three teachers in a school having classes from nursery to Grade-VI,” Mahmood said and demanded that there should be at least six teachers for such a school under the one-class-one-teacher policy. The participants criticised the government for deploying educators in high schools in a ratio of one teacher to 60 students and termed it impractical.
“Even if a teacher spends a minute on a student in a period of 45 minutes duration, it would be impossible to focus on each student during the given time span,” Dr Niazi contended.
They went on to say that there were several schools where classrooms were too small to accommodate 60 students in a class.
EA office bearers compared public schools with private schools that have around 25-30 students in a class. They demanded the government to terminate the rationalisation policy and prepare a new one with the consultation of all stakeholders.
Even before the enforcement of the new policy, the government should first complete the admission process. The policy should be devised keeping in view the total students along with those enrolled freshly, EA officials suggested. Speaking on the incentives issue, the participants said that the government did wrong with the public servants by not increasing their salaries in the budget. Even the allowances and incentives they get were now being cancelled, they added.
They called for enforcing the time-scale promotion policy from basic pay scale (BPS) 1 and to reissue the notification regarding it that was withdrawn by the government after issuing it for BPS 16 and above officials.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 1st, 2020.
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