KARACHI: Staff of private schools confused: Extended summer vacations
By Mukhtar Alam
KARACHI, Aug 6: The management and staff of privately-run schools in the city are confused about their functions during the summer vacations, which have been extended upto Aug 17 by the provincial education department.
While the city government’s educational officials are bent upon to witness a real compliance of government’s decision pertaining to extension in the summer vacations by private schools in the city as well, teachers are not happy with the school managements seeking presence of teaching and non-teaching staff at school.
Some of the private school teachers were of the view that since the schools had been required to remain closed in continuity of the summer vacations, they deserved the leave from resuming their duties till Aug 17.
As the managements are not supposed to call students and teachers during the summer vacations, which is normally observed from June 1 to July 31 every year under the provincial government’s directives, it is not necessary for the staff to report for duty during the extension in summer vacations.
The government officials say that the decision to extend the vacation till Aug 17 has been taken in view of the meteorological department’s forecast of further heavy rains in the province.
“Apart from the fact that a number of the government schools were under the use of the rain-affected people of Sindh, we also want to ensure safety of the school going children, who might be stranded either in the school or on their way to home in case of heavy rain in near future,” maintained a senior educational official.
However, some of the school managers see the government’s decision to extend vacations upto Aug 17 as uncalled for in the case of schools in Karachi. We have not heard of any forecast of heavy or devastating weather condition for Karachi and as such school should be allowed to resume academic activities at the earliest, said an administrator of private school, adding that schools charge considerable amount from students, a part of which was finally passed on to teachers against their teaching assignments.
Another view from management side was that private schools normally chalked out their schedule in advance and any gap like that of over two weeks as imposed by the government would disturb the whole academic process, and thus the students would suffer.
When contacted, the EDO Schools Anwar Ahmad Zai told Dawn that management and staff at the privately run schools should not feel perturbed at all. School managements were at the liberty of involving their staff, including the teaching staff in any school related activities, excepting the conduct of teaching classes, during the extended vacation period.
He maintained that government school teachers could also be called for training courses, proficiency lecture or other academic activities, provided that the competent authorities desired so. However, he clarified that non-teaching staff, including the school heads, who held administrative posts, were required under the rules to attend their respective institutions even during the two-month summer vacations.
