TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: Increasing school timings by half-an-hour has served no purpose and instead only caused trouble for parents, students and teachers, the All Goa Secondary School Teachers Association has said.
Speaking to media persons after a meeting of the secondary school teachers attended by one teacher of each school, the General Secretary of the Association Dattatray Naik said that they have already met the director of education and will now be meeting the chief minister to discuss the issue.
“What is the benefit of increasing the timings by half hour? The half hour added does not allow us to do anything better for the spiritual, intellectual, or physical growth of the students. What purpose is served by increasing the timings?” Naik questioned.
Dissent against the new timing introduced by the government has been brewing among the parents and teachers, but the teachers are the first to unitedly come out against it.
Teachers claim that the added half hour was distributed over the day adding five minutes to each period and thus benefits of the added time wasn’t really trickling down. “What different can one do by extending the periods by five minutes?” Naik questioned. They also hit out at the government for seeking to hide behind the excuse of the Right to Education Act to justify the new school timings.
“Nowhere in the RTE Act is it said that school hours should be five-and-a-half hours. Out of the 38 section of the act the issue of school timings is discussed only in the schedule of the Act where it says that students from classes I to V, should be given 100 days and 800 instructional hours. This works out to four-and-a-half hours for these students,” Naik said.
The RTE also recommends that for middle school there should be a minimum of 220 working days and 1000 instructional hours besides 45 hours of work per teacher including hours of preparation.
“Instead the government has decided to have uniform timings for all students from classes I to XII,” the teachers complained. “It is wrong on the part of the government to attribute the change to the RTE,” Naik said.
The teachers have also resolved to meet again on July 25 to hold a meeting to vote and elect their new committee after the incumbent president and vice president became headmasters and hence are no longer eligible to be a part of the association.
