CHANDIGARH: Thanks to teacher absenteeism and the failure of the education department to perform its supervisory role, the high and secondary school education in the rural areas of Punjab have come to a grinding halt,
The poor performance of a vast Majority of rural students in this year’s matriculation examination has been dramatically illustrated by the low pass percentage which is hardly 20.
Reports are that no rural student succeeded in achieving any distinction; There are hundreds of village schools where not a single student passed the examination. Even among those who managed to pass the number of third divisioners is overwhelming.
The first divisioners in the rural areas are a rarity.
The worst affected are Sikhs whose population in the rural Punjab in 90%. As an off-shoot of the poor educational standards of the rural students, the percentage of the Sikhs in services will go down further to cause still greater unemployment and unrest.
According to local surveys of the results, the most important factor responsible for the poor results is the shortage of teaching staff in rural areas, the high incidence of absenteeism among those deployed, high teacher-taught ratios and the poor facilities available to rural students to prosecute their studies,
It appears that the state’s education department had not been given sufficient finances by the Indian government to recruit teachers. For instance, in the senior secondary school, Bilga, Jalandhar district, there are 13 teachers for 1400 students. In the government high school Ghaga in Patiala district the number of students is 900 but the strength of teachers is 27. This is true of most of the other schools in rural Punjab.
The problem of insufficient teachers has been compounded by an irrational deployment policy by the state’s education department Influential teachers manage to get posting in urban areas where schools have disproportionately large staff strength, Both teachers and posts are taken off the rural schools to oblige the powerful urban-based teachers. Corruption also plays a significant role in this sphere.
Yet another but important factor responsible for derailing the school education in the rural Punjabis the sight of the teachers’ organizations. These organizations are unionized and are over cager to organize protest rallies to seek better financial deals for teachers and this trade union activity is done at the rest of teaching work. The resultant absenteeism is papered over by the school inspectorate which dare not take action against the teacher trade unionists. These unions are mostly controlled by Communists antagonistic to Sikhs.
Frequent strikes in rural Punjab to protest against killings by the police, too, interfered with smooth conduct of education. Yet another reason why most students failed was the stepped up campaign against copying launched by the Punjab school education board which conducts the examinations.
The end result is that Sikhs and other rural people have been further relegated in the quest for education and employment The rural students can not offer any competition in higher and technical disciplines leaving the event have open for urban students, in other words, the rich poor chasm which is reflected broadly in Hindu-Sikh tensions in Punjab will grow further to complicate the Punjab problem.
Incidentally, the Punjab government authorities have paid no heed to the derailment of education in rural Punjab even days after the results of the matriculation examination.
Article extracted from this publication >> Aug 7, 1992
