Punjab deploys mentors in schools

Chandigarh, Dec 13: Punjab Minister of School Education Harjot Singh Bains on Tuesday directed the District Education Officers to deploy 749 Block and District Mentors of science, mathematics, English and social studies in schools.

He said at present 680 teachers of these subjects were doing field duty as block mentors and 69 teachers as district mentors instead of teaching in schools.

According to Bains, the purpose of the 'Mission-100 Percent' campaign was not to get hype by presenting fake statistics but to increase the learning efficiency of every student by improving the quality of education.

He said he had received reports from some districts that departmental rules were not followed when making these deployments, which clearly stated that no mentors be deployed in middle schools, but only one mentor in single-teacher middle schools can be deployed.

Similarly, making these deployments, schools in remote and backward areas which were suffering from staff crunch should be covered first.

Then schools with 50 per cent staff and in dire need for a teacher of a subject should be covered. Likewise, the mentors should be deployed in schools where there is no teacher of the subject concerned.

The Education Minister said prejudice or bias against any teacher should be avoided and these deployments should not be done in big schools where one or a few posts were vacant, in the urban areas or schools near cities.

He said that these deployments will be done till further orders and written orders in this regard will be issued on Tuesday by the District Education Officers of the Secondary Department who are solely responsible for making these deployments transparent and in an effective manner.

Bains categorically said now before the half-holiday, the teacher or head of any school will not mark as on-duty for any meeting or office work and if he has to go somewhere for urgent reasons, he must first get approval from the District Education Officer.