A two-room primary school has evolved into a situation of crisis in Kheda Madhopur village of Agar Malwa district. The Madhya Pradesh education system could not provide help to as many as 55 children from Classes 1 to 5 who are enrolled in the school.
There is a provision of only one teacher who is currently available to teach them all subjects, including Hindi, English, science, social science and mathematics, across all grades.
The other teachers posted at the school are tied up with the government duty under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls since November.
Impact of SIR in classrooms
According to NDTV, the impact inside the classroom is very clear. Half of the blackboard is used by the teacher to teach the lesson for Class 4, while on the other half, the teacher jots down notes for Class 5. In the next room, a single blackboard is split into three sections to adjust Classes 1, 2 and 3.
Bharat Kumar Jatav, the teacher at the school, mentioned, "The teachers are engaged in BLO (Booth Level Officer) and SIR work. The children are suffering. I am the only one here."
"Today, I asked the children to memorise their English lesson and write it in their notebooks. After that, they start talking because I cannot attend to everyone at once. The fourth and fifth graders are sitting together. Earlier, I taught Classes 1 to 3, and the other teacher handled 4 and 5. Now everything is happening together," he added.
Raj, a Class 5 student, mentioned, "When Sir goes to the other class, we don't understand what is written here. Then the children shout, and we cannot study properly."
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What do the authorities say?
According to the State Level Teachers' Association, the workload has turned unbearable. "For the last two months, teachers have been under extreme pressure," said Jagdish Yadav, the association's state president.
"We are ready to cooperate with the government, but the government must also understand which responsibilities should be given to teachers and which should not. In many districts, academic work was informally deprioritised. More than 50,000 teachers were engaged in SIR work, and many schools were left without even a single teacher. The pressure has been so intense that several teachers have even died due to work stress," he alleged.
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The state government says that it is trying to bridge the gap. School Education Minister Uday Pratap Singh said, "We are recruiting around 32,000 teachers. 24,000 eligible teachers have been promoted, and 76,000 guest teachers have joined schools from July 1."
The government had issued an order back in 2016 mentioning that teachers from high school and higher secondary, and especially those who teach mathematics and science, should not be assigned election or other government duties.
