Teachers in tribal hamlets worried over home classes

Hyderabad: The worried teachers of tribal welfare schools have sought the intervention of Tribal Welfare Minister Satyavathi Rathod over the recent decision of the Tribal Welfare Commissioner who had directed the teachers to conduct the classes for two hours every day for three students at their homes in the tribal hamlets.

All the regular teachers and the casual relief teachers are told to adopt villages under each Ashram school and visit daily one adopted village and spend six hours with the students in the village on a rotation basis to take classes.

However, the Telangana State United Teacher's Federation (TSUTF) told the Minister that the Covid was rapidly spreading in the rural areas of the State, and parents were worried. Against this backdrop, it is not advisable to ask teachers to visit the homes of the students to take classes, it said.

Speaking to The Hans India, TSUTF general secretary Chava Ravi said the instructions to take classes at home were also against the unlock-4 guidelines issued by the Centre and the Government Order issued by the State government.

It can be recalled that earlier the Education department had instructed that only 50 per cent of teachers attend the schools on any given day, and the remaining asked to monitor online classes from their homes. Against this backdrop, the teachers urged the Minister for the withdrawal of the Tribal Welfare Commissioner's instructions.

In all, 99,984 students are studying in the primary schools (from Classes 1 to 3) and the Ashram schools (from Class 4 to 10). About 5,205 teachers are working in 1,774 schools located across 44 mandals in the State.

Mostly, the schools are located in the forest areas in Bhadradri-Kothagudem, old Adilabad, Asifabad and Nagarkurnool districts of the State. In case of Ashram schools, the teachers have been taking online classes. Hence, adoption and going to the villages to take classes would be redundant, the teachers said. Besides, the Covid scare is looming large in the rural areas.

When contacted sources in the Tribal Welfare Department, they said that almost all the teachers working in the tribal welfare schools stay locally. It would not be a problem for the teachers staying in the same village to take classes for the students from the same village at their homes for two hours. Similarly, when it comes to adoption of Ashram schools, the officials said that the teachers have to go to the adopted village, where the students do not have access to the online classes.