Staff crunch takes a toll on municipal schools

Acute shortage of teachers has hit the educational standards of municipal schools in the city. The 105 primary, upper primary and high schools run by the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) have a sanctioned strength of 924 teachers. Out of the total, 116 teacher posts have been lying vacant for the past several years.

The number of vacancies includes 23 non-language teachers (school assistants), 38 Telugu Secondary Grade Teachers (SGTs), 17 Urdu SGTs, four PETs, two drawing teachers, a crafts teacher and two music teachers. There was no teacher recruitment in VMC schools in recent years to augment the staff strength. The VMC is managing with 808 teachers for total student strength of 24,132.

When contacted, United Teachers Front (UTF) Krishna district president SP Manohar Kumar said that the total number of teachers in primary schools was 326 against the sanctioned strength of 367. In upper primary and high schools, 75 teacher posts have been lying vacant for quite some time against the sanctioned strength of 557.

The 482 teachers could not match the sanctioned strength despite their best efforts to maintain high educational standards in upper primary and high schools. “It is overambitious on the part of the VMC to expect 100 per cent results in the SSC examinations with inadequate teaching staff. It is not correct on the part of the educational authorities to issue memos to teachers of schools which failed to fare well in the examinations without considering the ground realities,” the UTF leader said.

Students Federation of India (SFI) city president T Praveen said that the government should focus on filling vacant teacher posts by releasing the DSC notification to make the schools compete with corporate educational institutions. It should realize the fact that the government schools could not produce better results with inadequate teaching staff and lack of basic infrastructure, he said.

Speaking to The Hans India, VMC deputy education officer K Durga Prasad said the municipal corporation utilised the services of 330 educational volunteers earlier to overcome the shortage of teaching staff. After the enactment of the Right to Education Act, the utilization of education volunteers’ services was stopped.

“The VMC has already sent a proposal to the State Government seeking filling up of vacant teacher posts in the municipal corporation schools. We are confident that our efforts to improve educational standards in VMC schools will yield results soon,” he said.