Kupwara, Dec 28: The shortage of lecturers in government higher secondary schools across north Kashmir’s Kupwara district has severely affected education, raising serious concerns among parents and the residents.
According to official data available, Kupwara district is facing a deepening academic crisis with 413 lecturer posts lying vacant in government higher secondary schools. History subject tops the list with 46 vacant posts, followed by Education 42 posts, English 40, Urdu 39, Mathematics 38, Chemistry 34, Physics 31, and Economics has 24 vacant posts.
Other notable subjects having vacant posts include Public Administration 21, Psychology 17, Botany 16, Political Science 15, Arabic 15, Zoology 13, Hindi 12, Commerce and Sociology 11 each, Statistics 9, Geography and Environmental Science 7 each, Computer Science 6, Kashmiri 5, Electronics 5, Music 4, Persian 3, Philosophy, Islamic Studies, Functional English, and Stenography have 2 posts each vacant while Home Science, IT, Geology, and Punjabi have 1 post each lying vacant.
Several parents told Greater Kashmir that the vacant posts of lecturers has directly impacted academic progress of their wards. “In most of the higher secondary schools located in rural areas of the district there are no lecturers for core subjects like Mathematics and Science. How can our children compete in different competitive exams be it NEET or JEE (Mains) and (Advance),” said Irshad Ahmad a local from Lolab. “The shortage of teachers in higher secondary schools has forced students to depend on private tuition, which many families cannot afford. Government schools are meant for the common people, but the shortage of teachers is pushing education out of their reach,” said Advocate Mir Imran of Rajpora Handwara.
Habibullah, a parent and former Sarpanch from remote Machil sector of Kupwara said that the situation was worse in hard zones as classes remain unattended for weeks in far-flung areas with the result students lose interest for studies and dropouts increase. “The government must do something concrete to fill all these vacancies so that the education sector in Kupwara may see a bloom, otherwise the situation is abysmal as of now,” he added.
The residents said that although the department hire services of contractual lecturers but the hiring process take almost two to three months with the result the students are unable to complete the syllabus well in time. “These contractual lecturers are mainly posted in soft zones and the hard zones generally suffer due to lack of teachers. We are anticipating that this year, the higher secondary schools in hard zones will also have substantial staff for 11th and 12th classes,” the residents added. Locals have urged CM Omar Abdullah led government to fill the vacant posts at the earliest so that the students may not suffer.