Aug. 20: Academic activities in several hundred primary and secondary schools across Bengal have been hit hard as the state government has turned a blind eye to the acute shortage of teachers following the Calcutta High Court order restricting recruitment of parateachers.

Nearly 24,000 parateachers were appointed by several hundred schools last year for a monthly pay of Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000. Parateachers are people recruited on contract on lower remuneration than that of regular teachers.

A bulk of these parateachers are completing their terms this year but are not being given re-employment because of the high court order.

The government is yet to decide on how to fill these vacancies and the authorities of schools in various districts are now complaining that they are unable to ensure that classes will be held smoothly.

“The enrolment of students has considerably increased over the past two years as state-aided primary schools have been directed to admit the maximum number of students possible to achieve the target of bringing every child in the 5-14 year age group under the education system within 2010,” an education department official said.

The state government had last year recruited over 24,000 parateachers in hundreds of schools in various districts to handle the additional load.

However, the high court had a few months ago asked the state government not to recruit parateachers, citing gross pay disparity between full-time and contract teachers.

The Nadia district administration has written to the state education department and the school service commission separately to recruit teachers in the primary and secondary schools.

About 2,000 parateachers of the district have been denied re-employment by the district education department.

District magistrate Rajesh Pandey said the Nadia school education would suffer after the exit of these teachers who have contributed to the uplift of the standard of education in about 2,500 primary and secondary schools in the district.

The situation is equally grave in Burdwan district.

“The teacher and students ratio in Burdwan is sure to get affected if the vacancies that have been created after the expiry of the contracts of the parateachers are not filled up,” said Sahidul Islam, the chairman of the Burdwan district primary school council.

In Birbhum district, education department officials said the teacher-student ratio is likely to fall to 1:54 though ideally there should one teacher for every 40 students at the primary level.

School education minister Kanti Biswas said the government is helpless as it has to abide by the high court ruling. He, however, said the government is taking all possible steps to ensure recruitment of permanent teachers to fill up the posts falling vacant.