20 august 2024 : The paradox is too obvious to be set aside. The Punjab Government is brazenly spending crores of rupees every day in promoting its VVIPs and publicising their ‘achievements’. At the same time, it is depriving thousands of children with special needs (CWSN) of their fundamental right to education because it says “it has no money to recruit special educators.”
The teacher-student ratio in government schools across the state is highly skewed. The Right to Education (RTE) norms say that there should be one special tutor for every 10 students from Classes 1 to 5. Likewise, for children studying in Classes 6 to 8, there should be one teacher for 15 children.
Shredding the rule book to smithereens, Gurdaspur has just seven tutors for 2,300 children, which, on an average, means there is one teacher for 328 students. For the entire state of Punjab, there are 279 teachers for 44,604 children, which translates into one educator for 159 students.
“Education officials say a committee has been formed under the Director General of School Education (DGSE) to appoint tutors to cover the shortfall. When will the committee submit its report and when will the teachers be recruited?” asked Harish Dutt, president of the Berozgar Vishesh Shiksha Adhyapak Union, an organisation that is fighting for the welfare of the CWSN.
With the government busy doling out freebies at the tax-payers expense, it is neck deep in debt and will find it almost an insurmountable task to recruit the teachers.
It was in 2010 that the government had appointed 293 teachers and after that not even a single educator has been recruited.
Officials admit that there is a shortfall of nearly 10,000 teachers. “We will request the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI), which is a body working directly under the Union Ministry of Social Justice, to provide special training to regular teachers who, in turn, will teach the CWSN,” said a senior Education Department official.
However, there is a loophole here. The qualifications for a special needs teacher are Bachelors in Education (B.Ed-Special)) or Diploma in Special Education (D.Ed-Special). If a teacher does not hold either of these diplomas, he cannot teach. The RCI rules state that if a regular teacher is asked to teach special needs children, he or she is liable to be prosecuted in a court of law.
“The Punjab Government officials say regular teachers will be imparted special training. This is not possible as according to RCI rules, teachers will open themselves to prosecution. A child with impaired physical mobility or facing challenges while communicating through traditional verbal signs and cues has to be trained in a different way,” said Harish Dutt.
State Govt neck-deep in debt
- With the government busy doling out freebies at the tax-payers expense, it is neck deep in debt and will find it almost an insurmountable task to recruit the teachers
- It was in 2010 that the government had appointed 293 teachers and after that not even a single educator has been recruited. Officials admit that there is a shortfall of nearly 10,000 teachers
