HYDERABAD: Will the forthcoming Assembly elections, with its middle-of-academic-year schedule, have a negative effect on the students and their performance? That possibility is very likely considering that more than 95 per cent of government school teachers in the State are currently engaged in a training process before they are deployed for poll-related duties. And due to their time away from regular teaching duties, the students, especially those preparing for the SCC examinations, are likely to suffer. As per the academic calendar, syllabus for Class X has to be completed by December end. But teachers of State schools say that achieving this target might not be possible in the current scenario.
While this is the first time in several years that elections in the State are being held in the middle of the academic year, the timing couldn’t have been worse for the students who had already missed classes for two months at the beginning of the session due to issues in teacher transfer.
Post Assembly elections, there will be Panchayat elections, followed by the Lok Sabha elections -- in all of these government teachers will be pressed into election duty at the cost of classroom teaching. There are over lakhs of teachers working in State-run schools and all of them, with the exception of pregnant, disabled and sick employees, have to take up poll duty.
“Each academic year has 220 working days of which 60 days have been lost during teacher transfer; another week is going into Assembly elections and the same number of working days will be lost in Panchayat elections and followed by five to six days in Lok Sabha elections. That means nearly 80 working days will be lost this academic year. This is bound to have some effect on SSC results,” said Sarwotham Reddy, president of Telangana Recognised Teachers Union.
Devil and deep sea
Teachers feel that they are caught between the devil and the deep sea—while they can’t miss poll duty, they are also responsible to ensure that the syllabus is completed and results are up to the mark too.
Like every year, this year too they are holding two-hour long special classes before and after school. Srinivas Rao, an English teacher from Zila Parishad High School, Lingampalli, said that they will hold week-long extra classes to ensure the portion is completed despite the election disruption. “Extra classes when students are already spending an hour before and another after school will burden both teachers and students. But there is no other option,” said J Prathibha, a teacher from Karimnagar.