In order to check rampant absenteeism of school teachers from evaluation duty, the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board (GSHSEB) will issue online assessment duty orders for teachers that have to be downloaded by schools before collecting students’ hall tickets. The move is being seen to thwart the usual explanation given by teachers that they did not receive the orders issued by the Board via post.
Schools have to download the orders, fill required details of teachers and teachers have to sign the order to keep it in school record, beginning with March 2023 Board exams.
According to the GSHSEB, every year on an average, nearly 20 per cent teachers, especially from private schools, would remain absent from evaluation duty for Class 10 and Class 12 boards citing that they did not receive the orders issued by the board by post.
This year, before the hall tickets for students are issued, assessment duty orders for teachers will be issued, stated GSHSEB chairman A.J. Shah.
In Gujarat, out of over 50,000 teachers assigned evaluation duties, nearly 10,000 remain absent. These teachers, drawn from government, grant-in-aid and self-financed schools are assigned duties at nearly 500 evaluation centres across the state.
The self-financed school teachers state that most of them are on contractual basis and their yearly contracts expire on February 28. So, technically they are not on rolls of these schools at the time of evaluation that usually happens in April and May.
Considering the high number of teachers being absent for evaluation work, the state government in 2019 passed a resolution to impose a fine ranging from Rs 3,000 to Rs 25,000 on teachers not turning up for evaluation process for Class 10 and 12 exam papers.
In 2019, as many as 5,000 teachers did not turn up for evaluation of Class 10 examinations and around 6,000 were absent for evaluation of Class 12 general exams, while another 3,000 teachers were absent for the evaluation of Class 12 science examinations.
The GSHSEB had claimed that such a high number of absent teachers leads to mistakes by evaluators as they are overburdened and rush to complete their task.
The state board had increased the remuneration for evaluators and also increased the penalty four times for erring teachers. The previous fine of Rs 100 per mark in the Class 12 science stream was increased to Rs 400 and for Class 10 and Class 12 general exams, the fine of Rs 50 was increased to Rs 200.
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