State board overcomes assessment boycott by jr college teachers by roping in evaluators from lower classes to get job done in time
For the first time, the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE) this year enlisted teachers from secondary classes for the HSC paper evaluation as those from junior colleges had boycotted the assessment and gone on strike. Still, the board is likely to declare the results anytime in the next 12 days.
After the striking teachers had started returning the answer sheets allotted to them by the board for evaluation, resulting in about 500 bundles of answer sheets being sent back to the respective divisional board offices, the board was left with no choice but to recruit teachers from schools at a minimum cost for assessments.
There are around 8,644 non-aided colleges with six lakh students and 21,000 teachers. “We had to enlist teachers with less experience from the secondary classes whose names were not registered with us. We also had teachers from aided colleges who took up the responsibility. The assessment of papers has been done in advance of the scheduled deadlines and we are in the last stage of declaring results,” MSBSHSE chairman Sarjerao Jadhav said.
Over 13 lakh students, including 2.13 lakh from Pune division, had enrolled for the exam this year. More than 21,000 teachers from non-grant junior colleges across the state had boycotted the assessment as they wanted the government to remove the word ‘unaided’ from its guidelines for unaided junior colleges — these colleges did not get funds from the state — and also wanted the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission.
Some junior college teachers who were entrusted with the task of evaluating answer sheets of SSC and HSC exams had also threatened to go on strike accusing the board of piling up workload on them and offering less money for the job. “Teachers protesting over fees were very few, so it did not affect us much,” Jadhav said. u00a0u00a0
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