Polls hit SSC students’ prep

Warangal: In the face of recently held elections to the State Assembly, and the Gram Panchayat polls to follow in quick succession, students, especially of Class X (SSC) are likely to fall short of preparation in the run up to their Board exam with majority of their teachers being tied up with election duty. 

Never before in the recent past, teachers have to attend the election duty in the middle of an academic year, thus causing a huge inconvenience to the students. This is in addition to the logjam caused by the teachers’ transfers early in the academic year.

Normally, teachers complete the syllabus for Class X in the State-run schools by December end, so that they could go for revision besides preparing the students for the pre-finals and annual examinations. The 2018-19 academic year, which started with the teachers’ transfers, appears to be creating problems for the SSC students.

The series of disruption that started with the teachers’ transfers at the beginning of 2018-19 academic year was continued with the elections to the Assembly. The students lost a few days while the teachers took some time to settle in their new locations.

They had another break when teachers have to attend Assembly election duty for four to five days. In addition to this, at least 10 to 12 teachers from each mandal were entrusted with the responsibility of training the others for poll duty. This kept them about 10 days away from their regular teaching duty.

And now, with the local body polls are around the corner, students have to miss their teachers once again. Panchayat polls are slated to be completed in three phases. In such a case, those teachers who were appointed as Returning Officer (RO) or Assistant Returning Officer (ARO), they have to say bye-bye to their school anywhere between 15 to 30 days. 

The RO/AROs have to take care of polls beginning with election notification to the announcement of results. Speaking to The Hans India, Telangana State Tribal Teachers Federation (TSTTF) State President Islavath Laxman said: “Unfortunately, students are bound to face trouble this academic year but there is no way out for the teachers to skip the election duty as it considered as the national duty. 

Instead of conducting Panchayat polls in three phases, the authorities should work on completing it at one-go, so that some time will be saved.” With the SSC examinations are scheduled to begin from March 16, 2019, the government needs utilise the staff of primary schools only for poll duty, exempting those employees who look after SSC classes, a senior assistant teacher said. The administration can also depute employees from other departments for the election duty, he added.

With Cooperative, ZPTC/MPTC and Lok Sabha elections are lined up one after the other; it’s going to be a humongous task for the teachers to focus on preparing students for the annual exams in a planned manner, another teacher said on condition of anonymity.

It may be noted here that there are over 600 government high schools in erstwhile Warangal district with around 20,000  students appearing for the SSC exams scheduled for March 16, 2019. There are 1,707 gram panchayats in the erstwhile district that will go to polls.