LAHORE, Nov 24: The Punjab chief minister’s adviser on teachers’ training, Sadia Shahzad Chaudhry, has said a majority of the primary schoolteachers serving all over the province are not capable of imparting quality education to their students.
Speaking to Dawn on Monday, she said most of them lacked motivation to teach their students.
“It was surprising for me during a visit to different areas in the province to see that most of the teachers had not taught any thing to their students till the end of September (the academic session starts in April),” she regretted.
Those teachers might have an excuse for not teaching English, but unfortunately they had not touched any other subject like Urdu, mathematics and science. She said a majority of the primary schoolteachers had not studied English. “How can they teach without trying to learn (English),” asked the official. The government should train the primary schoolteachers on modern lines, she stressed.
Calling the idea of holding 10-day or so teachers’ training programme as waste of money and time, Ms Chaudhry said she would focus on continuous education. The University of Education, she said, had been assigned a task to develop improved curricula for the training of the in-service teachers.
After conducting a need assessment survey in the province, she said, a comprehensive teacher training programme would start at the union council level from the next month.
No overnight change could be brought in the education sector, she said, adding only round-the-year refresher courses could improve the lot of teachers.
Replying to a question about financial and other problems being faced by the teachers, she quipped “human beings always come up with a lot of excuses.”
She said she had asked the teachers to work hard and fight for their cases of pay raise, incentives and above all — their respect.
Still admitting that teachers were neglected in society, she said, the government would extend incentives to the teachers serving at schools in the far-flung areas. “I have already spoken to the chief minister to give allowances to those teachers, who go to serve in far-flung rural areas in the province.”
Answering another question, she said, there was a great need to monitor teachers’ performance regularly. The district governments should send their officials to see the ground realities and take reformative steps, she suggested.
The CM’s adviser said she herself had picked three union councils of Sheikhupura, Gujrat and Multan and met the DCOs and EDOs to learn about the progress made by the district governments so far.
She observed that the Punjab education department officials, who were earlier responsible for monitoring the performance of teachers in the province, had not performed their jobs honestly. “Had they performed their duties honestly, our teachers would not have developed bad habits to make the country suffer.”
Ms Chaudhry said she was also working to bring out a gazette to inform the education department officials about the activities regarding the teachers’ training.