Protests Mar Teacher’s Day Celebrations in Himachal

The first Teacher’s Day celebrations by the BJP-led Jairam Thakur-led government in Himachal Pradesh will be marred by protest as the Himachal Government Teachers’ Union (HGTU) has given a call to wear black badges on September 5 to express resentment against non-implementation of their demands and withholding increments over poor results in the board exams.

The teachers are agitating over withholding the increment of 38 post-graduate teachers for achieving less than 25% results in spite of strong reservations by the union. The teachers against whom action has been taken include 10 in Kangra district, eight in Bilaspur district, six in Hamirpur district, five in Mandi district, three in Solan district, two each in Shimla and Una districts and one each in Kullu and Chamba districts. The process of scrutinising teachers is still going on and more teachers, showing less than 25-50%  results in board examinations, are likely to face action in spite of protests by HGTU.

Virender Chauhan, President of HGTU, told Newsclick that “there have been no promotions since January, principals are not getting promoted as well. Schools are constantly understaffed. How is a teacher expected to perform when a teacher has to look after multiple classes and multiple activities of various classes?”

He attributed the poor results to various policies undertaken by the state government, stating that, “it was told to the government that teachers alone were not responsible for poor results.”

As per the state government policy, no student can be declared ‘fail’ up to Class X.  Board examinations of Class V and Class VIII have been scrapped. As a result, the process to judge the learning levels of the students had been abolished. The teachers claimed that they came to know about it only after the results of the board examinations (for class 10) were declared.

Chauhan said the government should make basic changes in the policy so that the learning levels could be judged after each class and special attention could be paid to weak students, adding that  teachers could not change the foundation and learning levels of students overnight. Moreover, they were overburdened with other assignments, he noted.

The protest deals another blow to the Jairam Government which has been facing criticism over the dearth of teachers in government schools. Earlier this year, the High Court had reprimanded the government for running behind schedule in filling the posts of teachers in government schools by July 31, 2018 wherein the Education Department not only found itself racing against time, but also found itself facing hurdles – reportedly because of the politicians. The Department has recruited 400 Trained Graduate Teachers (TGTs), but their postings were allegedly being delayed due to political pressure.

Chauhan, while  condemning the government, said in spite of a series of meetings with the government, their demands like implementation of old pension scheme, 4-9-14 time scale, revision of grade pay, regularisation of the PTA, PARA and Primary Assistant Teachers (PAT) and benefit of contract service after regularisation had not been implemented. It was reported that even demands like re-designating PGT as lecturers and language and other teachers as TGT, which has no financial implications, were also not implemented.

The chief press secretary of the union, Kailash Thakur, said because regularisation and promotions of teachers had been hanging fire for the past many years, several teachers had retired without availing the benefit of promotion.

According to Chauhan, the protest is being upported by a number of Government school teachers and will serve as a reminder to the government of their democratic right to protest against their policies.  He said since even children would notice as to why their teacher’s are wearing black badges, it would have a far-reaching impact on not only students but their parents, forcing them to question who the real culprits of the declining standards of education were. “The union will not accept such unilateral and anti-teacher decisions and (we) will chalk out the future course of action to get the decision reversed”, he added.