Mumbai : Two months after the controversial state government resolution that wanted school teachers to click selfies with students and upload them on the education department’s website, the teachers find themselves grudgingly struggling with the task while the department’s website is still unprepared to handle the load. The idea was to keep a tab on the school dropouts.
Most schools – whether private or civic, have not started taking selfies though the GR was to be implemented from the first week of January. Class teachers have to click selfies after making groups of 10 students on two Mondays of every month. These selfies have to be uploaded on the education department’s SARAL (Systematic Administrative Reforms for Achievement of Learning by Students) website with the names and Aadhar number of the children in the photos.
Teachers of the civic schools said that their schools have not received any instruction from the BMC to follow the GR without which they do not feel bound to follow. Mahesh Palkar, Education Officer in the civic body’s education department said that he had forwarded the GR to the ward officers and will check if it has reached schools.
Generally teachers seemed unhappy with the task, with some principals saying that they have unanimously decided they will not do it. “Has the government thought of providing us with the facility needed for this – whether teachers have the right smartphone or adequate net connectivity to upload the photos?” asked Rajesh Pandya, Vice President of Teachers Democratic Forum (TDF).
Another teacher lamented about wastage of time. “Are we supposed to teach or click selfies with children? There will be total chaos in our class as children will not maintain discipline while we would be busy in finishing this task,” he said. He added that in zilla parishad schools where the number of students it is not a problem but in the cities where each class has over 60 students it is a tedious one.
The education department’s website also seemed ill-equipped to handle the task. There was no provision made to upload photos. An official said the website will be readied within a week.
