“To me, liberty means going to school and learning,” says Kimani Ng’ang’a, who has waited more than eight decades for his first day of school. The Kenyan villager wants to make sure nobody else has to wait that long. The 85-year-old Kimani, perhaps the world’s oldest elementary-school pupil, toured New York Tuesday recently to promote a global campaign urging assistance for an estimated 100 million children denied an education because of poverty.
In Nagaland reports have been received about a Government Primary School (GPS) in Kiphire district where the village children of Huronger have been denied schooling for about a month now. The reason is not because of poverty as in the case of Kimani, the Kenyan villager. Here at Huronger, there are no teachers for the poor village children as a result of which the GPS had to shut down.
Nothing can be more deplorable than such gross negligence on the part of the authorities. It has to be remembered that denial of education is denial of the right to life itself. The School Education Department must immediately rectify the situation at the earliest so that no child at Huronger village is denied this right as enjoyed by their more fortunate peers in places like Dimapur and Kohima.
The non-availability of teachers at various GPS particularly in far flung outpost is a serious issue. It is nothing new. However only recently through the local media has such negligence been specifically pin-pointed and brought to the notice of everyone including the State government. Recently, students of another Government School in Mon district had complained about non-availability of teachers and had threatened to go on an agitation. Only then did the government move by issuing the appointment order of teachers to be posted for the school. The truth which emerges is that rural areas have been grossly neglected and educational administration in villages and small towns of Nagaland has been lacking.
The random transfer orders issued, sometimes unauthorized must be seriously looked into. It would be of interest to note that a survey carried out by the Education Commission of Nagaland some years ago had recorded people’s response that external interference in teachers’ recruitment and transfers, including that by the politicians, should be stopped. The Commission further reported that teachers should be recruited through competitive examinations and that monitoring and evaluation of schools should be carried out.
As per the State Human Development Report, qualitative improvement in “Nagaland’s educational landscape is a priority area of the government”. For this, the active and honest participation of teachers is an essential ingredient. Allegations of teachers drawing salaries without attending to their duty should be taken as a serious offense and the government should take measures by monitoring such errant teachers. The principle of no work no pay should be put into practice. In the backdrop of the recent bogus appointment of teachers unearthed, the government should seriously think about implementing a uniform recruitment policy for teachers, improve deployment of teachers and conduct inspection of schools, especially in remote areas.
More often than not teachers get away with absenteeism because they are accountable not to the villagers but to a distant State capital and it is observed that powerful teachers unions protect their own even if they fail in their duty. To add to this, teachers salary devour the majority of the education budget. The Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) for Nagaland has revealed that the deployment of teachers in excess of norms in Government Primary Schools (GPS) and Government Middle Schools (GMS) resulted in excess expenditure of more than Rs 4 crore during the period from September 2002- February 2004. And to hear that schools in small towns and villages do not have enough teachers is adding insult to injury.
