Shortage of teachers in government schools is a complaint often received from most parts of the country.
But the scenario is opposite in Nagaland. Nearly 11,000 excess school teachers have become "a burden" for the Northeastern state grappling with insurgency for decades. In fact, there are schools where the number of teachers are more than the students.
According to Nagaland's department of school education, the state at present has nearly 20,000 school teachers including those engaged under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) whereas it requires about 9,000 teachers.
"This has now become a huge burden on the state. There are some schools with many teachers without any student and there are also schools where teachers are more than students," the department said while countering the demand by two influential students' unions to mainstream more teachers engaged under the SSA and RMSA.
The department said the state at present has a total of 1990 schools having 169,548 students. But the teacher-student ratio was 1:9 against the national average ratio of 1:32. "There are six government schools with zero enrollment and 32 schools with 0% pass in High School Leaving Certificate (Class X) examination," the department said.
Naga Students' Federation and Eastern Naga Students' Federation on Monday observed a statewide strike with a demand to "mainstream" SSA and RMSA teachers of 2010 and 2013 batches. But the education department fears that such a move would further increase the burden on the state's exchequer.
Faced with the "burden" of excess teachers, the state government asked the education department to work out an optimum number of teachers required as per enrolment. "The government also directed the department to frame guidelines or find a feasible solution to give a golden handshake to the teachers who are under qualified or untrained teachers," it said. The process, however, remained on hold due to the Coronavirus pandemic.