‘Politicisation’ reason for poor results in govt schools: Rising People’s Party (RPP)

Rising People’s Party (RPP) has cited politicisation of bureaucracy, including principal director (PD) system, attachment of teachers to VIPs/SDEOs/DEOs, proxy teaching system, etc, as the main reasons for poor performance of government schools.
Reacting to a clarification of the outgoing PD regarding poor performance of government schools, which it termed as thoroughly unconvincing but still welcome, the party in a press release said it awaited the response of the adviser of Department of School Education (DoSE) and the State government to address the issue of abolition of the post of PD.
However, it termed the PD’s COVID -19 excuse for the department’s “worst performance in 6 years” as “worst excuse of the year”. It pointed out that the pass percentage from 2017 which was 42.60% had come down to 36.63% in 2022.
RPP said an average person could see that the pass percentage over the years was consistently the same (slightly worse in 2022), which meant the reason for the abysmal condition of education was something else.
While the PD post must have been en-cadred by the Ministry of Personnel as explained by the outgoing PD, RPP suggested abolishment of post by the State government immediately.
Once the PD post was abolished, the party reasoned that the director of Department of School Education would exercise full powers and responsibilities and, since the director was a departmental cadre officer, he or she would give his or her best for having risen through the ranks as teachers initially. It urged the DoSE adviser to address the burning issue immediately.
Claiming that DoSE had the highest number of employees (more than 26,000), the party said the PD’s wild claim that there were no sufficient eligible officers for the posts of SDEOs and DEOs was an insult to all employees and officers of the department.
Perhaps this attitude of the PD and his inability was the reason why the department has gone to the dogs, it added.
Claiming that there were other important reasons too, RPP asked what was the department’s policy regarding proxy teachers and whether it had adopted “zero tolerance” measures.
The party alleged that thousands of teachers were concentrated in district headquarters as they were attached to VIPs/SDEOs/DEOs, while there were “dual service teachers” (appointed under DoSE but working in private sectors and earning dual salary), excess teachers, etc, all of which had profoundly affected the foundation of lakh of students.
And if the reason for the deficit of assistant headmasters and headmasters was because of “court cases between different groups of teachers” as cited by the PD, then the party said it only highlighted the poor management of the department by HoD, AHoD and adviser.
Because of this “politicisation” of DoSE by the State government, the party claimed that government school students had a very weak foundation. Basically the government played with their lives, it added.