Chandigarh, November 1
The UT Education Department has served another notice on all the government schools, asking them to immediately transfer the responsibility of monitoring the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) funds from schoolteachers to clerical staff.
This is the second notice sent by the department within a month and a half. The previous notice, issued on September 16, raised similar concerns.
Source said the failure of the schools to give heed to the previous order forced the department to resend the notice.
Nearly 100 government schoolteachers end up working as clerks in the UT government schools, while managing the SSA funds. Their responsibility includes keeping the attendance record of teachers recruited under the SSA society, making their salary cheques, and maintaining account heads, cash books, ledgers and stock registers besides other formalities.
The SSA, being the largest literacy programme of the Central Government, regularly releases grants to government schools under several academic heads, and the whole burden to keep a record of these grants lies on these teachers.
A school teacher, Ravinder Sharma, said that due to this responsibility, teachers did not get time to take their classes.
“It is also a big financial loss to the government. A clerk earns half of what a senior teacher gets. Making a teacher serve as a clerk can’t be justified,” he said.
Arvind Rana, president of the SSA Teachers’ Welfare Association, said making teachers perform clerical duties violated the Right to Education Act, 2009. He said as per the Section 27 of the Act, no teacher could be deployed for any non-educational purposes other than the decennial census, disaster relief or election duties.
“The earlier orders of the Education Department did not have any impact on the schools. The second order should be implemented strictly," he said.
Dr Vinod Sharma, president of the Government Teachers’ Union, however, said the problem could not be solved till the department deputed additional clerical staff in government schools.
“There is a severe shortage of clerical staff in the schools and this problem should be simultaneously addressed,” he said.
No clerical post sanctioned under SSA, clarifies Dept
In the fresh notice, the UT Education Department has made it clear that no post of clerk has been sanctioned for schools under the SSA society. It is, hence, the duty of the existing clerks in the schools to manage the SSA funds along with their routine work, the notice states.
The UT Education Department has served another notice on all the government schools, asking them to immediately transfer the responsibility of monitoring the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) funds from schoolteachers to clerical staff.
This is the second notice sent by the department within a month and a half. The previous notice, issued on September 16, raised similar concerns.
Source said the failure of the schools to give heed to the previous order forced the department to resend the notice.
Nearly 100 government schoolteachers end up working as clerks in the UT government schools, while managing the SSA funds. Their responsibility includes keeping the attendance record of teachers recruited under the SSA society, making their salary cheques, and maintaining account heads, cash books, ledgers and stock registers besides other formalities.
The SSA, being the largest literacy programme of the Central Government, regularly releases grants to government schools under several academic heads, and the whole burden to keep a record of these grants lies on these teachers.
A school teacher, Ravinder Sharma, said that due to this responsibility, teachers did not get time to take their classes.
“It is also a big financial loss to the government. A clerk earns half of what a senior teacher gets. Making a teacher serve as a clerk can’t be justified,” he said.
Arvind Rana, president of the SSA Teachers’ Welfare Association, said making teachers perform clerical duties violated the Right to Education Act, 2009. He said as per the Section 27 of the Act, no teacher could be deployed for any non-educational purposes other than the decennial census, disaster relief or election duties.
“The earlier orders of the Education Department did not have any impact on the schools. The second order should be implemented strictly," he said.
Dr Vinod Sharma, president of the Government Teachers’ Union, however, said the problem could not be solved till the department deputed additional clerical staff in government schools.
“There is a severe shortage of clerical staff in the schools and this problem should be simultaneously addressed,” he said.
No clerical post sanctioned under SSA, clarifies Dept
In the fresh notice, the UT Education Department has made it clear that no post of clerk has been sanctioned for schools under the SSA society. It is, hence, the duty of the existing clerks in the schools to manage the SSA funds along with their routine work, the notice states.
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