45,000 teacher posts vacant: Whither SSA?

BHUBANESWAR: Even as the State Government has been able to arrest the high dropout rate of schoolchildren, it has failed to fill up the huge vacancy of teachers at  primary level. While the Government claimed that nearly 35,000 teacher posts are lying vacant at primary level, sources in Sikhyak Mahasangh said that the number would be more than 45,000. With many primary schools reeling under shortage of teachers, the existing teachers are shouldering the extra burden. Apart from trained teachers, there is shortage of headmasters and headmistresses too.   Sources in the All Utkal Primary School Federation said more than 21,000 schools do not have headmaster/headmistress and there are many single teacher schools in many districts. A high-level meeting, chaired by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, decided in December last year to recruit 17,543 sikhya sahayaks. Necessary instruction was issued to the district collectors to go for recruitment in a transparent manner. Though advertisements were issued and applications received, recruitment of teachers was stalled without any reason. Sarva Sikhya Abhijan (SSA), a flagship programme of the Centre for universalisation of elementary education, was launched in 2001 with an objective to provide education to children in the age group of 6-14 in a time-bound manner.  The other aim of the programme was to retain all the school-going children by 2010. The State has no doubt made a significant achievement by reducing the  dropout rate from a high of 52.41 per cent in 2002-03 to 3.1 per cent in 2011-12. The number of out- of-school children came down from 10 lakh to 0.31 lakh during the same period. Besides, gender gap in primary enrolment has  narrowed down. Meanwhile, the State Government has decided to open more schools in tribal sub-plan area so as to provide schooling to children near their villages and hamlets. If necessary, norms regarding number of children, required for opening a school, will be relaxed for tribal areas having inadequate communication infrastructure, official sources said. Under the annual action plan for 2012-13, a budgetary provision of ` 3,679 crore has been made in which SSA component is around  ` 3,571 crore, National Programme for Education of Girls at Elementary Level (NPEGEL) accounts for ` 18 crore and Kasturaba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) component is ` 89 crore. While the Centre is sharing the bulk of expenditure under SSA, the State Government should have no problem in filling up the vacant posts, said a functionary of the teachers’ federation.