Bandipora students suffer due to uneven teacher-student ratio

Bandipora, Oct 18: Students in north Kashmir’s Bandipora district are facing difficulties due to an irregular teacher-student ratio in almost all the educational zones of the district’s three divisions: Sumbal, Bandipora, and Gurez.

The district, which already struggled with a teacher-student imbalance, has seen the problem worsen after recent transfers in the education department, according to insiders and experts.

They say the transfers have affected the quality of education and the welfare of the students angering many especially the students and guardians.

Mohammad Hamza Lone, an activist, said it was a serious issue that needed to be addressed soon. He said there were cases where “10 teachers were assigned for 15 students, and in some instances, it was the opposite with eight teachers for 300 students.”

He urged the deputy commissioner Bandipora, Owais Ahmad, to personally intervene in the matter and also sought the intervention of the director of school education to rationalise the teacher-student ratio in the district to ease the student and teacher sufferings.

Lone said, “They (the department) must conduct surveys and depute teachers to the schools as per the need so that no one suffers and justice is done.”

The chief education officer (CEO) of Bandipora, Mohammad Amin Beigh, said, “We are anticipating and hope that a few orders will come out regarding rationalisation in a few days.”

In those orders, the CEO said that the issues with schools where the teacher ratio was higher than the student roll would be sorted out.

Moreover, he said that in cases where there was a shortage of teachers, that issue would also be addressed simultaneously as the government was working on it.