Teacher posts based on scientific data

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Doing away with the system of headcount in schools, the staff-fixation would henceforth be done on the basis of the data compiled for Unique Identification (UID) number project and on the data furnished by Sampoorna school software.  On the basis of the scientific data, the new teacher posts would be created in aided schools. The meeting of the Quality Improvement Programme (QIP) in education held here on Monday discussed the new mode to be adopted in staff fixation.The headcount of students, usually taken on the sixth working day after the school reopening, has been turning into a fake practise generating bogus figures, for fear of division fall and thereby a cut-down in the teacher roll. The Cabinet meeting held in August had decided to bar the connection of headcount with staff-fixation to do away with the inflated figures of students.The draft of the teachers’ rehabilitation package was read out in the meeting which decided to make specialist teachers (sports, work experience and music) mandatory in schools. The protected teachers would be deployed to the teachers’ bank and the vacant posts in government schools would be reported to the PSC.  The meeting decided to mobilise money to conduct school festivals for students of classes IX to XII. Earlier, festival fee was collected from all students but with the implementation of RTE the fee can no longer be collected from elementary school students. The high school students would not be forced to part with their money either. Donations from parents would also be received for conducting the festival. The possibility of using money from the RMSA (Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan) fund would also be considered.The Christmas examinations in schools would be held from Dec 14 to 23. The question papers would be finalised by SSA and SCERT. However, instead of creating a question bank and asking the schools to create independent question papers, a uniform question paper would be created for a district. The meeting was attended by General Education secretary, DPI, Higher Secondary director, IT@School head and representatives of nine teachers’ associations including GSTA, KSTA, KPSTU, KAMA and KPHA.