TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: The test of a teacher is how s/he evaluates a child, under the Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation, else s/he is no different from a clerk, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar said even as he lashed out at teachers for being concerned only about their salaries, leave and transfer, leaving the quality of education they impart at the bottom of their list of priorities.
Parrikar said he would work out a mechanism whereby the teachers would have a kind of appraisal at the end of the year and teachers who are not showing dedication for the job would not be considered for promotions and increments.
“Teachers get a Rs 27,000 salary at entry level. This is their starting salary. I have no problem with that; in fact I believe that teachers should be well paid. But can we not expect some sort of dedication to the job?” Parrikar asked.
According to Parrikar the state was spending around Rs 40,000 per child per year to educate him/her from Std I to XII which worked out to around Rs 868 crore working out to around 3.46% of the state’s GDP. There are around 2.40 lakh students in the state, Parrikar said.
“With such money, I should not have any headache to get the (desired) output (of quality of students),” Parrikar said.
“Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation is a means for a teacher to indirectly examine how much a child has grown intellectually. The ability to do is what will differentiate between a teacher and a clerk, otherwise the qualification is the same. Instead they are bothered about pay scale, leave and transfers,” Parrikar said.
On his part Parrikar assured that he would solve all the administrative problems of the teachers. “Over the last one year I think I have solved 70-80% of the problems. I will remove all remaining administrative bottlenecks, so teachers can focus on teaching,” Parrikar said.
stressing that teachers should concentrate on teaching and leave all the rest to him.
He said he would devise a mechanism to evaluate teachers, on the lines of the Teachers’ Eligibility Test, whereby a teacher would be tested for efficacy at the end of each academic year. “It is impossible to get a teacher terminated,” Parrikar said responding to Pratapsing Rane who had pointed out how a bad teacher could ruin the future of as many as 40 students, while the government was helpless in taking action against them.
“There will have to be a mechanism, to promote teachers that take trouble and it will have to be done if the quality of education has to increase,” Parrikar said.
Parrikar also said that as a consequence of the poor education system and the lack of parents taking interest in their child’s education, some of the engineers in the PWD department could not even spell the word ‘engineer’.
“Parent is not concerned about student’s education, but only about his qualification. If a MBBS graduate does not know that he shouldn’t indulge in private practice (while being a government doctor) and that he should not take instruments from GMC and use for his private practise, this is not education,” Parrikar said.
“Engineers (at the PWD) cannot tell what is wrong with the problem (of water supply) and they are supposed to think of a solution. When senior engineers do this, you know something is wrong. They have forgotten engineering, they are very good in finance… save for five to six persons (in the PWD department), others have forgotten their engineering. Some won’t even know the spelling of engineer,” Parrikar said.
“Our education makes students unemployable,” Parrikar said.
