The West Bengal government has temporarily halted recruitment of teachers, while older ones retire on a yearly basis. Also, the Supreme Court ordered the cancellation of about 26,000 teaching jobs. As a result, many schools now have a lack of subject-specific teachers.
To address the issue, the Higher Secondary Education Council plans to launch a ‘cluster model’. The ‘mapping’ has already occurred. The semester for Higher Secondary three and Class 11 two will begin in September and October. The Education Council aims to roll out the ‘cluster model’ ahead of these semesters.
Within the state, there are 7002 institutions under the WBCHSE offering 49, such as arts, commerce and science subjects. Currently, several of these institutions do not have adequate subject teachers.
WB board President Chiranjeev Bhattacharya said, “We want to ensure that students do not find themselves in any kind of trouble, because of the lack of subject teachers. We have adopted the ‘cluster model’ to mitigate the problem for student purposes.”
What Is The ‘Cluster Model’?
The Education Council will develop an area based hub or central school with other schools connected to that hub school. The rules note that for every 10 students, you need one teacher, which is not always the case. The teachers in the hub school and the schools surrounding the hub school will rotate to go in to teach in each of the schools.
For example, if one school has 10 students who have a chemistry teacher, and a neighbouring school has no chemistry teacher for 25 students, the teacher from the hub school will teach both groups. The process will be known as the ‘cluster model’.
First, the council will subdivide the district into ‘Education Sub-Divisions’ each containing up to 30 schools. The Council has initially mapped areas that include Kolkata, Barrackpore, Dumdum, 24 Parganas, 2 Midnapore, Howrah, Hooghly, etc.
In each district, a hub school will be declared, while smaller ‘hub schools’ will be identified within 3.5-4 kilometers of each hub school. In total, there will be seven schools from a hub school. As of now, the council has four district based offices Burdwan, Midnapore, Kolkata, and North Bengal. Each office will have two deputy secretaries assigned to oversee 30 schools.
We will hold a meeting from June 16 to 19 with the Regional Deputy Secretary and the officers of the regional office who are responsible for developing the cluster model. The meeting will be specific on the cluster model’s operation, as this year in the Class 9 admission process, not nearly as many students enrolled in physics as indicated for both commerce and science, and we have too many language-based teachers.
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