Editorial:To Staff Schools Better, End Interference

Teacher shortage continues to remain a challenge which confounds Sikkim. A new academic session is now barely into its third month, and transfers which should have been processed and served during the long winter break, are rolling out only now. Needless to add, this delay is going to be latched upon by those protesting the transfers as something which will unsettle classes in schools from where teachers are being relocated. Mid-term transfers do disrupt routines, but if the Department is to be believed, only the excess teachers from schools in East Sikkim are being spread out to the remaining three districts which are in the grips of severe shortage. If that is the case, then a few extra classes for the prescribed strength of teachers in East district becomes a very small price to pay so that classes can at least begin in schools elsewhere. Teacher transfers have never been easy to implement in Sikkim. The fact that the more conveniently located schools in the most-preferred East district have too many more teachers than prescribed is proof that “connections” have been leveraged to bulk up staff rooms here. Getting them to service educational requirements of remote schools in other districts is hence never easy. To get a sense of the scale of the imbalance, South Sikkim alones needs more 130 teachers even as East district, in its first round of stock taking, found 146 excess teachers in the primary school level alone. Rural schools need more than just primary school teachers, they are also short on Headmasters and graduate teachers. Only a minor part of this imbalance can be attributed to teachers proceeding on retirement. At the root of the problem is the continuing interference in the human resource management processes at the Human Resource Development Department. If clear directions were passed to the department to staff schools properly, there is no reason it should not be able to do so. This will however require even clearer directions to be passed to politicians and others with influence not to inundate the Department with recommendations endorsing placement requests. If these directions are reinforced with a political will not to allow interference, schools across Sikkim will become functional and no student left abandoned in classrooms without the required teacher. The pursuit of quality education will have to take its first step with better teacher deployment by the Department.