Thakurgaon Government Girls’ High School is suffering from a severe shortage of teachers and support staff.
The school began double shifts six years ago with the number of students almost doubling over the years to 1,904 currently. However, no new teachers or support staff members have been hired since.
The positions for 10 assistant teachers and two assistant head masters have been vacant for years. There are 39 teachers for 32 sections of the school with 10 more positions yet to be filled. Of these 39 teachers, 8-10 remain on leave.
The quality of education as dropped markedly as teachers have to take consecutive classes, and thus are unable to follow a lesson plan. Besides, most of the experienced teachers are busy with private tutoring at the school.
“Four to five of us students have to use one small bench. At times combined classes of the two shifts are held in one room and we cannot hear the lectures over all the noise,” said class eight student Swapnil.
One of the teachers Julekha Begum Julee said: “The student-teacher ratio is extremely high. When one teacher has to take five classes in a day, the quality will naturally fall.”
Headmaster Shankar Kumar Ghosh said: “The school also does not have the adequate third and fourth grade employees. When the two shifts were introduced no new positions for such employees were created.”
There is only one sweeper for whom managing the waste of the entire school is impossible, and that is why the school environment has become unhealthy, complained the teachers and students.
There is only one office assistant for the two shifts whereas the school authority said even if four office assistants were hired they would be having a hard time.
The school has a 100% pass rate with 124 GPA5 achievers in SSC last year.
Assistant Teacher Mahbub Alam and many other teachers said if the problems of this girls’ institution are resolved quickly, the results will be better; if not then it will become very difficult to maintain the current performance of the students.