School yes, teacher no at 188 locations!

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 23

As many as 188 schools in the state are running without a single teacher, while 1,075 schools have only one teacher for the entire school.

Mewat heads the state with the maximum 77 schools without a single teacher, while Jind, Rohtak and Rewari do not have a single school without a teacher.

As par the data available on Unified District Information System for Education (U-DISE) uploaded by the State Education Department on February 26, Yamunanagar district has 52 schools where not a single teacher is available.

Besides, the number of schools without a single teacher is 17 in Palwal, 9 in Jhajjar, five each in Kaithal and Fatehabad, four in Gurgaon, 3 each in Ambala and Sonepat, 2 each in Hisar, Kurukshetra, Panipat, Mahendragarh and Sirsa and 1 each in Bhiwani, Karnal and Panchkula.

Notably, the number of schools without a single teacher and schools being run by a single teacher has increased in the past one year.

Last year, 132 schools in the state did not have a single teacher while 895 others have only one teacher.

In this one year, the number of schools in Mewat increased from 52 to 77 and in Palwal from 13 to 17. However, in Yamunanagar, the number of schools without a single teacher decreased from 54 to 52.

In contrast, the number of districts with no school without a single teacher has fallen from 12 to 3 in the past one year.

Last year, Ambala, Bhiwani, Faridabad, Fatehabad, Hisar, Jind, Karnal, Mahendragarh, Panchkula, Panipat, Rohtak and Sirsa districts did not have a single school without a teacher.

The U-DISE data shows that out of the 22,315 government schools in Haryana, 188 do not have a single teacher, 1,075 are running with a single teacher, 2,895 have two teachers, 2,113 have three teachers, 5,649 have four to six teachers, 3,997 have seven to 10 teachers, 2,983 schools have 11 to 15 teachers and 3,415 schools have more than 15 teachers.

At least 4,158 schools of the state have less than three teachers, according the report.

Education Minister Ram Bilas Sharma said that the Education Department kept on shifting teachers during its rationalisation process to ensure that no school remains without a teacher. “After July this year, no school will remain without a teacher,” Sharma said.