Govt PU colleges face acute shortage of teaching staff

Nischith N. | NT

While a greater number of students have enrolled in PU colleges this year, the staterun PU colleges are facing a huge shortage of lecturers. With final exams scheduled to be held in April, the shortage has become more acute, as many of the lecturers have gone on deputations.

Now the demand for the state government to send back all the teachers who are working on deputation to their original PU Colleges of posting and in future not to put them on deputation for any non-teaching or administrative job.

“The Right to Education Act, as also the Constitutional amendment has made the right to education a Fundamental Right and it is incumbent upon the teachers and our government to provide better education to children. But there is already an acute shortage of teachers in government-run PU colleges across Karnataka and most of the teachers are working on deputations, which is not acceptable. Teachers should be meant to be teaching only,” said Kumar P, a History lecturer at Govt. PU College.

According to the reports, as per the guidelines from C&R Rules, based on the seniority a lecturer can only be Deputy Director (DD) which is the only non-teaching post. “DD is the only post which is non-teaching, even the principal post is a teaching post. But for many years, people with high influence have gone to different departments for administrative works,” Kumar added.

As per Section 27 of the Right to Education Act, it is mandatory and the state government will ensure that no teacher should be assigned with any non-teaching job except for decennial population census, disaster relief duties, and duties relating to election of local self-governing bodies, state legislature or parliament. Besides, the authorities will also see that as per Section 28 of the Act, no teacher engages in private tuitions.

But when the state-run PU colleges’ numbers are shocking, as information available for the PU department, the state has over 1,232 government PU colleges with sanctioned posts of over 12,853 lecturers. Of these only 11,544 posts have been filled and 1,306 posts are vacant (many went on deputations).

“A lecturer in a government college is a gazetted officer. Teachers working in a government school are not gazetted, officers. Though their appointment is made by the government, they are not above the grade pay required to be covered under Class II. So only in PU colleges are going on deputation because it is a gazetted post and they feel free in some administrative work” said another lecturer requesting anonymity.

It is claimed that recruitment of PU lecturers were held in 2016-19 but only 58% posts were filled. Since all class 10 students were promoted, there has been an increase in enrolment in all government PU Colleges leading to shortage of teaching staff.

Now there is a demand that lecturers cannot be placed on deputation, leaving students at their own peril.

The state government should transfer all the teachers working on clerical jobs or otherwise on deputation to their respective original postings in college.