1.40 lakh teachers on record, 20000 not traceable

There are no whereabouts of around 20000 teachers working with Jammu and Kashmir Education Department, the Government informed the Legislative Assembly on Monday.

Winding up the discussion on demand of grants for School and Higher Education, Minister for Education Naeem Akhtar said on papers there were 1.40 lakh teachers working in School Education Department.

“But while compiling the data from each district, we found the figures (number of teachers) was around 1.20 lakh to 1.25 lakh. We are trying to locate the missing teachers,” the Minister told the House.

He was responding to queries by several members from opposition National Conference and Congress regarding “irregularities” in transfer policy.

In his response the Minister said once the Department processes the entire database of the teachers the whole system would be streamlined.

The total number of Government owned schools in Jammu and Kashmir stands at 24265 with sanctioned teacher strength of 1.40 lakh teachers.

While the Government annually spends more than Rs 5500 crores on school education, performance of Government schools has remained far below than schools in private sector.

The pass percentage in government schools has not gone beyond 50 for past 10 years while as the percentage is 75 in private schools, as per the survey.

The dropout rate at 5th and 6th standard levels in J&K was higher (6.24 percent) than the rate at national level (4.67 percent). Similarly the dropout rate was worse (5.24 percent) at 8th and 9th standard levels than national level (3.13 percent).

To address the problem, the Department last year started creating a database about enrolment, teachers and pupil-teacher ratio in the schools to go for rationalisation.

The Minister has already announced framing an education policy under which student would be focus of any new initiative or reform in the Education sector.

“I appeal to the members (legislators) that help us to streamline the system. There should not be intervention in posting and transfer of teachers,” Akhtar requested the members.