GOAN TEACHERS ARE CONTRACT LABOR!

No Comments

The biggest scandal in education in Goa is that 30% to 40% of the teaching staff at the primary, secondary and higher secondary levels are either on a monthly contract basis or even more diplorably hired on a per lecture basis. Teachers at higher secondary are paid only Rs250 to Rs400 per lecture even after ten years. In Goa students across the state have been protesting against the sacking of experienced contract teachers to accomodate newly recruited teachers without any experience.

UNLIKE the rest of the country Goan higher secondary school students are on the war path. Since Sept 5 Teachers Day an increasing number of students across Goa have been protesting. Not because there are no school buildings or buildings needing repairs under the threat of collapsing like the PG building in Delhi recently. Students in Goa are not demanding basic facilities such as drinking water, toilets and proper class rooms. There is no problem with the physical infrastructure so much but Goan students are protesting against the sudden replacement of long-serving lecture-basis and contract teachers mid-term. Overnight towards the end of the academic year the Goa government has replaced the contract and lecture basis students with inexperienced freshly recruited teachers.
At Pernem, Valpoi, Sanguem, Panjim and Borda in Margao students have been protesting against the abrupt sacking of long-serving contract teachers who have been moved out mid-academic year. Students are understandably concerned, as the sacking of their old experienced teachers comes just before the October Board Exam. Students have boycotted classes and in some cases even taken to the streets. Generation Alpha is on the march in Goa also. Generation Alpha in Goa is protesting against the ill-treatment of teachers. Generation Alpha is objecting to the humiliation of teachers. Teachers in Goa have been reduced to white collar labor. The worst affected are the lecture basis teachers who constitute almost 40% of teachers across government and aided schools. The Department of Education has connived and abetted the treatment of teachers as contract labor.
Lecture basis teachers are paid a pathetic Rs250 to Rs400 per lecture. Plumbers, electricians and even delivery workers probably earn more than lecture-based and contract teachers. Contract teachers have no guarantee of employment. They can be sacked at any time without assigning any reason or any notice period. The lecture basis and contract teaching staff do not have any job security and they are also not entitled all the benefits which permanent teachers enjoy.
In sharp contrast to contract teachers who can earn a maximum of Rs25,000 a month, assistant professors in government and aided higher education system have a basic entry salary of Rs57,000 per month. With experienced and seniority their scales can go up to almost Rs2lakh a month. The present grades are professor grade A Rs65,000 and grade B Rs40,000. Even a contract teacher with over ten to 15 years of experience gets paid less than a regular assistant professor.
Even the better off monthly contract teachers can only hope to get between Rs45,000 to Rs65,000 consolidated contract pay. It is not as though the contract teachers are less qualified or experienced than the newly recruited teachers. The qualification requirement for both at the higher secondary level is a master’s degree in the subject concerned. Ironically, the new teachers recruited through the Goa Public Service Commission without any experience get paid much more than a contract teacher with 20 years experience. No teacher can give their best with the anxiety of being sacked any moment, which is what is now happening in government schools all over the state.
The government is not concerned with the quality of education. Sadly, the aided schools are equally indifferent. They all want to save money by hiring contract teachers instead of permanent teachers. Besides salary permanent teachers have to be provided a whole lot of benefits including paid leave and for women teachers 18 months of paid maternity leave. A lecturer in the Disocen Society managed St Xavier’s College had to go to court to get her maternity leave sanctioned, even after serving the institution for 20 years.
The government itself admits that the new teachers recruited are not better qualified and more experienced than the existing teachers. The Directorate of Education claims that the new teachers comprise of new recruit and those promoted to permanent Grade 1. There is no explanation why the jobs of the contract teachers has not been regularized. Instead of recruiting new teachers.

Students of a government higher secondary school at Pedne staged a protest after some seasonal teachers were transferred to other schools. The students boycotted classes and raised slogans demanding that the teachers be brought back. Hooting “We want justice”, the students protested on the school premises over the transfer. Meanwhile, some teachers reportedly asked the media not to cover the protest.

The students in the Borda government schools have alleged that some of the new teachers are inferior to the teachers replaced. The major charge is that the new teachers were taking science classes though they were not qualified to do so.
Subjects specialities are a major issue in schools not only in Goa but cross the country. At least in theory according to the rules there should be specialized subject teachers. This means for example, a teacher of maths at the higher secondary level should at least have a BSc in maths. Indeed, the rules state that the maths, physics and chemistry teachers should have post-graduate degrees in the subject they are teaching. The latest survey by the Tata Institute of Sciences has revealed that there is a severe shortage of maths and physics teachers. Most of the science subjects are being treated jointly. This leads to a science teacher teaching all the three science subjects like physics, chemistry and maths.
Apparently there is also a shortage of language teachers in English and Konkani. It is not surprising that more than 70% of students at the secondary and higher secondary levels have to go to coaching classes. We know of tuition teachers who run parallel tuition schools for groups of students. All this reflects a deep crisis in the education system at the school level in Goa and the rest of the country. Clearly, teaching at the secondary and higher level is substandard. This is serious as they are entry level for professional courses like medicine and engineering. We see a dichotomy of some schools having computer classes and others not even having even a maths teacher.
Education is one of the largest and most important public services in any country. Behind the impressive literacy and education indices of Goa there is a less visible reality of the manner in which teachers are treated. A teacher who once entered a school or college with the expectation of building a career over decades finds a system in which the work is performed by people on a contract basis. The fundamental question is career teachers are being replaced by contract teachers. There are 4059 primary teachers in Goa. At the middle school level there are 3057 teachers. At the secondary level there are 3830 teachers, the majority of them in private schools. At the higher secondary there are over 2,000 teachers. We understand that over 40 percent of these teachers are on contract. This undermines the pillars of education in so called very advanced state of Goa.