As many as 226 lecturers of colleges affiliated to Bangalore University are worried over the Directorate of Collegiate Education asking them to work in different colleges in a week saying that redeployed teachers are to work in two different colleges depending on the workload.
The university’s stand on redeploying teachers is that the workload has gone down in parent colleges with not many students enrolling for B.Sc course.
Hence, the lecturers are now being redeployed to work in another college. The redeployment would make teachers work in their parent colleges for a few days in a week and in another college on others. Teachers are the first casualty of this exercise on account of drop in student strength.
While permanent teachers are deployed to colleges where there is enough student strength, guest lecturers are shown the door.
The redeployment orders lead to a situation where most of these 226 lecturers are to leave their families and children behind and move to other cities to teach.
The exercise itself is problem-prone. A lecturer redeployed last year recalled her experience of working in two colleges. The lecturer, though eligible for a post in a degree college, was sent to a PU college initially.
When a vacancy arose in the degree college, she was asked to report there. “But, in the degree college, I had only 12 hours of work. So I was asked to go to another government college for four hours of work. I was asked to evaluate degree answer scripts, though I had not taught the text,” she recalled, on the condition of anonymity.
When she reported in another college for four hours of work, the college principal asked her to teach post-graduate students, she said.
“I conducted post-graduate classes from 8 a.m. to 10.30 a.m., and then, from 11.30 a.m. to 5 p.m., I evaluated degree answer scripts,” she added.
In another instance, a lecturer serving as a PU College principal was redeployed to another college, leaving the parent college to find a person to head the institution. “This would certainly affect administrative work,” college authorities said.
In yet another instance, four teachers of a particular college were redeployed to other colleges leading to a situation where the college was left with only nine permanent lecturers, while the others were all guest lecturers. The lecturers said that in addition to teaching, they take up administrative work.
“Asking teachers to work in two different places in the same week affects not only quality of teaching but also administration work,” they said
Courtesy: The Hindu, October 07, 2013