Riyaz Bhat
Srinagar, Oct 6: Despite hard efforts to rationalize Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR), School Education Department in Jammu and Kashmir is still reeling under ‘disproportionate PTR at primary and middle sections wherein majority of the government-run-schools are having surplus teachers while some are yet to overcome the teaching deficiency’.
An official said, “Currently, the department would want to focus on rationalizing PRT at primary and middle levels wherein many complaints are pouring in regarding the surplus and deficit teaching staff.”
The official said that the department has different PTR for different wings of Jammu and Kashmir
“As of now, we have 1:10 PTR for the primary section,” the official said.
As per Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, the Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) norms for primary and upper primary level are 30:1 and 35:1 respectively.
It also said that for the middle section we have a PTR of around 1:11-12. “Likewise, for the secondary level we have a PTR of 1:21-22 and in the case of senior secondary we have PTR of 1:29.”
In 2022-23, the Ministry of Education had said that there are 22 percent of schools at Primary level and 6 percent of schools at Upper Primary level with adverse PTR.
“In order to balance the PTR in every school, the UT should go for rationalization. All this could be done by the school level analysis using the latest UDISE data,” MoE said in a previous Project Approval Board (PAB) meeting.
In the meeting the ministry also said that, “There were more than 10,000 surplus teachers in the UT. The UT should start adequate deployment of teachers by ensuring that the specified pupil teacher ratio is maintained for each school”
However, the ministry in the ongoing fiscal while seeking the action taken report from Jammu and Kashmir was informed, “In J&K, School complex System has been adopted and implemented, wherein 746 School complexes have been notified as per NEP 2020, for optimum utilization of resources in a complex.”
The concerned authorities for J&K had also informed that the rationalization of staff was being done and all the institutions shall be provided. “The motive is UT of J&K has rationalized the teachers within the cluster by empowering Cluster Heads to make best use of men and material available within the cluster.”
The JK government had also said that it has also helped the administration to improve the PTR, especially at Primary and Elementary level.
“Moreover, most of the surplus teachers have been adjusted against vacancies through online mode. In order to balance the PTR in every school, the UT has made the rationalization of teachers and the extra teachers from the over-served schools have been put in the deprived ones to ensure that there is no urban-rural imbalance in teacher postings,” states the action taken report of J&K government.
