LAHORE, Oct 23: Over 900 high and higher secondary schools, including 360 girls’, in the province are functioning without headteachers for several years.
Most of the posts for headmasters and headmistresses are lying vacant in Faisalabad, Shiekhupura, Okara, Gujrat, Narowal, Rawalpindi and Rahim Yar Khan, respectively.
The schools are currently being run on ad hoc basis as in most of the cases senior teachers are holding additional charge of the posts. The ad hoc arrangement is, however, creating problems in handling administrative affairs for lack of legal authority.
When contacted, senior officials in the Director Public Instruction (DPI), Punjab, said the problem was becoming more and more complicated because the eligible teachers did not want to be posted as headmasters away from their residences. They even forgo promotions fearing that they would be posted at a distant place.
During the last one year, they claimed that thousands of teachers have been promoted while hundreds of such cases were in the pipeline to be cleared in a few months.
They said the number of schools running without heads was much higher last year as over 600 headmasters and headmistresses have been recently appointed.
On the other hand, teachers claimed that the promotion process in the department was very slow resulting in shortage of senior teachers to be appointed as heads of schools. They claimed that a large number of promotion cases were lying pending with the DPI for the last many years.
The teachers associations representatives also claimed that a majority of schools did not have full strength of their staff owing to ban on recruitments. They said the government was recruiting 30,000 teachers in the province but all on contract basis.
Since the devolution of power to the local government, the district coordination officer (DCO) is authorized to look into the matter of schools in their districts. The DPI deals merely with the promotion cases of the employees besides some petty functions.
There are 4,590 schools in the province which include 23 comprehensive, 10 pilot, eight central model, four technical high, 290 high secondary and 4,255 high schools.
