E Arun & Tarun Kartick
Port Blair, May 06: In the coming academic year if any parent finds a government school is under-performing, then he must not get worried because situation will be same in every other government schools. In the academic year of 2013-2014 almost every government senior secondary school will go headless, atleast for a month, as the Education Department in its latest experiment has made all principal as non-vacational staffs.
Earlier, like every other teacher, principals were also treated vacational staffs and they used to get two months summer vacation but from this year orders has been passed by the Director of Education that all Principal will have to go to school in summer vacation as they used to go during school days.
As per orders all the Principals are now going to school and coming back home, after doing almost nothing in school. But the problem will start when all the principals will apply for their usual one month leave, which they are entitled for during the next academic session.
What will happen if all the principals of all the government schools go for one month leave, they are now entitled for, in the month of June 2013, when all the schools will reopen? How all the schools will deal with the pressure of admission, new session without a fulltime Principal?
Even if all Principals do not take leave in June, everyone will take the leave somewhere in between June 2013 to March 2014. What will happen if they take leave during exam seasons? How will education department run the show?
CBSE has now introduced Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation system under which the evaluation is not based on term examinations or final examinations but it is based on the student’s performance throughout the year. If the Principals of different schools go on leave during the school’s working days then the schools functioning will definitely be hampered and the evaluation process might suffer serious setback.
This new orders will not only affect all the senior secondary schools but will also affect all the feeder-schools, placed under the senior secondary schools.
However, instead of getting bugged the some principals are happy with the decision, which means almost three months of mental peace for them.
“We have no work at present. We go to school in the morning and return back by 10 am or 11.am. No one from the department bothers to check whether we are in school. Two months we have total mental peace and then again we can avail one month of leave, as per rules,” a source in Education Department told Andaman Sheekha on the condition of anonymity.
In this regard, when Andaman Sheekha contacted Mr. R Devdas, the Director of Education, he said that this decision will not hamper education. “There will be no problems, absolutely Nothing. Vice Principal will be there to take care.
There are some schools, which do not have a principal at all but still those school are running,” Mr. Devdas told Andaman Sheekha.
When asked about the reason behind such decision, the Director said that during vacation time principal will take care of the school and perform duties like issuing Transfer Certificates to students, maintaining and repairing the school building etc.
However, he clarified that the decision was not taken by only him as the directions were issued with the consent of superior officers.
