Teachers want to be promoted
LAHORE - The Punjab government is unlikely to upgrade teachers in near future.
Teachers term this step anti-education. They raised their concern over this discrimination.
Rumour has it that the teachers could be forcibly retired, given golden handshake or their services could be handed over to the private owners.
The Punjab Education Foundation, a public funded entity is also a stakeholder. It introduced such schemes that could further damage the public sector schooling as it would be funding the private owners adopted government schools.
Public sector, contrary to the private one, is being run under umbrella of rules of business. All the government employees have to serve under some specific circumstance but some of its decisions tell a different story.
The teachers on the other hand recruited by the Punjab government are highly qualified bearing minimum of bachelors degrees but mostly, having masters, MPhil and PhD degrees are working as PSTs.
They time and again denied up-gradation on many grounds including lack of funds with the government.
An MSc teacher Samreen told this paper that she was posted as an educator in the Punjab Education Department on contract basis in 2013. Later, she was regularised and was given grade 9. Despite her higher qualification, she along with a lot of qualified teaching faculty, denied up-gradation as her community could not protest outside civil secretariat or Punjab Assembly as clerks did.
She said that that the teachers union staged protests but the leaders were trapped in conspiracy hatched by the education department officers. “On the verbal promises, the protest was called off,” said the teachers with no hope of any upgradation or promotion.
The 2018 targets of Parho Punjab, Barho Punjab could only be achieved by taking steps like filling of all vacant teaching posts, reducing overcrowding and multi grade teaching, through redressal of shortage of teachers; ensuring high quality teaching/ learning in class rooms; improving leadership and accountability at all levels and enabling a conducive learning environment for students.
But, situation on the other hand is disturbing, as highlighted a senior headmaster Muhammad Sharif. The highly qualified teachers are forced to work in very low pay scales while simple matric pass clerks and other officials are frequently upgraded.
“This approach led to very low educational standards in the public as well private educational institutions. Moreover, instead of considering the lawful demands of teachers to upgrade them as the government upgraded the clerks, it started privatising the public sector schools,” he added.
“The government should upgrade the teachers like it did in clerks case,” said the senior teacher. He demanded of the government that hollow education policy would further shatter public sector educational system besides promoting private business.
The clerks have been upgraded on their repeated protests who have just matriculate degrees but on the other hand highly qualified teachers are wandering from pillar to post, but to no avail.
After Punjab government’s notifications of the revised pay scales for clerks, the posts of all junior clerks were upgraded to BPS-11 while senior clerks were upgraded from BPS-9 to grade 14 and head clerks from BPS-14 to BPS-16.
An officer of the Irrigation Department also told the same story. He confirmed that it seemed that the structure of public sector was badly damaged owing to political decisions or subject to protests.