india

Updated: May 26, 2019 21:24 IST

The Madhya Pradesh government has decided to test skills of school teachers in about 700 schools by making them appear for an examination similar to class 10 and class 12 board exams after about 30% of the students in these schools failed in the MP Board of Secondary Education (MPBSE) examinations, an official from the school education department said.

Results of Class 10 and Class 12 board examinations were declared on May 15 and as many as 700 government schools across the state registered below 30% result. In all, 3500 teachers of these schools will take the examination on June 12. This was decided after a review meeting over poor board exam results especially of class 10.

“The teachers will be graded according to their performance in the examinations and if they fail, penalties will be imposed, school education principal secretary Rashmi Arun Shami said.

“This is to fix the accountability of teachers and check the capability of teachers,” she said.

District education officer, Bhopal, Dharmendra Sharma said, “The district committee of the department will set the question paper similar to the question papers prepared for the board examination in the past five years. This will check the level of knowledge of teachers.”

He said teachers could face demotion or even forced retirement if their performance was extremely poor. Under the rules, a teacher can be forced to take voluntary retirement if he or she is above 50 years of age or have completed 20 years of service.

As many as 61.32% students cleared the class 10 and 72.37% students cleared class 12 MPBSE examinations, the results of which were declared on May 15.

The result of class 10 came down by 5 percentage points as compared to last academic year even as the students were required to clear examinations of five out of six subjects from 2018.

Initially, the school education officials blamed insufficient time teachers could devote to teaching as they were engaged in election duties during 2019 November-December assembly elections and later in 2019 general elections for a dip in the pass percentage of students in class 10 exams.

“We will review it with the officers of school education and we are also planning a course correction to improve the situation in the next academic year on the pattern of CBSE,” Ajay Gangwar, secretary, MP board for Secondary Education said.

MP Teachers Association general secretary Ashutosh Sharma said, “Teachers have no problem in taking a test but the government should have also given ample time to teachers to upgrade themselves. Most of the teachers are engaged in official work and worked more than their duty hours.”