It has come to light that 16 municipal schools that started conducting class 10 classes this academic year have been working for the past month without a teacher for this class.
It has come to light that 16 municipal schools that started conducting class 10 classes this academic year have been working for the past month without a teacher for this class. Since this is the first year that the schools are running class 10 at their centres, they have run short of up to 42 teachers.
Meanwhile, these schools are yet to acquire the requisite permissions from the state department. Therefore, students have not been given the index numbers that are required to register them for the SSC board exams at the end of the year.
Corporator Shivnath Darade, who is also a member of the BMC’s education committee, has written a letter to the education department in this regard. Speaking to The Asian Age, he said, “The schools are in this state despite receiving clearance from the additional municipal commissioner’s level as early as February this year to hire staff and meet the deficit. The education department did not publish advertisements inviting applications for teaching positions.” The department claims that it is short-staffed and cannot issue the advertisements due to a lack of manpower to process applications, Mr Darade said.
In 2007, the BMC started a number of English medium schools, called Mumbai public schools, to make education in the English language available to all students. These schools initially held classes between classes 1 and 7. In the past three years, students got promoted after class 7, and have now reached class 10, which was started just this year. While 16 schools started holding class 10 classes, 20 schools started class 9 classes.
As per the education department’s rules, teachers teaching class 10 students in English need to have a Bachelors in Education (BEd) degree in the English language. However, these schools are currently working part-time with existing teachers from Marathi, Hindi and Urdu-medium schools. Mr Darade said, “The teachers aren’t able to focus on either class, as they have now been given additional charge. Besides, these teachers do not have command over the language. How can they be expected to teach it to others ”
