As of October 18, 2018, there are not enough teachers for every student in the three divisions of Bandipora district in north Kashmir. This is causing problems for students in almost all of the educational zones in these divisions.
People who work in and around the district say that recent changes in the education department have made the problem worse. The district already had a problem with an imbalance of teachers and students.
Many people, especially students and their parents, are angry about how the moves have affected the level of education and the well-being of the students.
A human rights worker named Mohammad Hamza Lone said it was a major problem that needed to be fixed quickly. Some years, he said, “ten teachers were put in charge of fifteen students, and other years, eight teachers were put in charge of 300 students.”
To make things better for both students and teachers, he asked Owais Ahmad, the deputy commissioner of Bandipora, to step in and fix the problem. He also asked the head of school education to help.
“So that no one suffers and justice is done,” Lone said, “they (the department) must do surveys and send teachers to schools as needed.”
“We are anticipating and hope that a few orders will come out regarding rationalisation in a few days,” Mohammad Amin Beigh, the chief education officer (CEO) of Bandipora, said.
The CEO said in those orders that problems with schools where the number of students per teacher was higher than the official number of students would be fixed.
When there were not enough teachers, he said that the government would work on that problem at the same time.
