Teachers need a magic wand

“I am paying one and a half Lac rupees as fees. Why is my child still not doing well in studies?” asked one of the parents to the class teacher in the PTM meeting. As if, paying a huge amount of fees is going to turn a slow learner, in to an A+ student, over night.

Neither the parents nor the management have any idea what kind of hell a teacher goes through at school in Hyderabad. The class rooms would be crowded with 25 to 48 students in ordinary schools. The teachers have a lot of work pressure like covering the syllabus, corrections, conducting exams, extra-curricular and co-curricular activities, making teaching aids, attending meetings, extra work for celebration days, etc. they can’t even eat their lunch alone peacefully. They have to eat with the class and check if everyone is following rules there as well.

School hours are not enough and most of the teachers carry their books and papers home to finish assessments.

Most of the schools in Hyderabad pay their teachers anything from Rs. 5000 to Rs. 25000 as salaries. Language teachers and primary class teachers are paid the lowest. Math teachers are paid the highest. The schools with fancy and posh names pay decent salaries but the pressure is the same. Some schools don’t have PF accounts and some don’t give any kind of leaves, neither sick leave nor casual leave, even for a single day. Their absence means loss of pay for that day. You are expected to be perfectly healthy and not have any functions or emergencies ever.

Teachers can’t quit because a bond is signed and their original certificates are kept by the management. It’s a trap for one academic year and next year the teachers join another school to face new atmosphere and a new kind of torture all over again.

It’s almost a sin to sit in the class. No chairs are kept for teachers. The old teachers with knee pains are rudely told to quit their jobs, but not allowed to sit. 

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