Coimbatore, Dec 2
Responding strongly to doubts raised over the requirements for school teachers that are recommended by the School Education Department, Principal Secretary of the Department Pradeep Yadav, has said that those teachers who are not willing to upgrade themselves can leave the profession.
Mr. Yadav was addressing the School Education Conference titled, ‘School Leadership for the 21st Century’, in the City today. When he was asked why the department was keen on making bridge courses compulsory for school teachers, he said: “Rather than complaining, teachers should try and develop their knowledge base by attending such courses. Those who have not completed the course will be sacked by 2019, for the welfare of the students and the teachers themselves”.
With the Department gearing up to adopt major changes in the syllabus, Mr. Yadav also pointed out that training the teachers for the new syllabus was one of the major challenges.
However, in order to tackle the challenge, the department was currently involved in creating a special training module for teachers.
Claiming that the module would largely involve Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Mr. Yadav said that the number of teachers would make it difficult for any upgradation to reach all the teachers within a short span of time.
“The State has more than 4.5 lakh Government teachers. The application of any module would take a long time for it to reach all the teachers,” he claimed.
Talking about the assessment aspect, where he felt the State was lagging behind, Mr. Yadav said that upgradation would be also be made in evaluation and requested private schools to adopt them. “Once we update all these things, we can also think about ranking institutions,” Mr. Yadav opined.
He also said that there were many areas that needed intervention and requested third parties like NGOs and Industries to pitch in to support to help in the growth of education in the State.
Mr. Yadav further added that the department was open to suggestions regarding upgradation in the newly released Draft Syllabi Framework.