Calcutta, Nov. 8: In a first that should put Bengal to shame, several government schools are going through four-day weeks to cope with lack of teachers.

Heads of the affected ins-titutions, which includes some of the most reputable schools in the state such as Hindu, Hare, Ballygunge Government, Bethune and the zilla schools, today lodged a complaint with Kanti Biswas, the school education minister, and sought his intervention.

“We are extremely worr- ied with the crisis of teachers,” Biswas said.

He attributed the development to the failure of the West Bengal Public Service Commission to fill up vacant teaching posts.

Unlike in state-aided schools, for which the School Service Commission manages the recruitment process, the public service commission appoints teachers to schools run directly by the education department.

The minister said according to procedure, the 40-plus state-run schools apply to the government individually requesting it to fill up vacancies. The government then refers the proposal to the state public service commission. “The panel is taking at least three years to fill up a single vacancy,” Biswas said.

Rupak Hom Roy, the headmaster of Ballygunge Government School, said students of at least one class were sitting idle through the day be-cause there were no teachers. “So, we decided to give one class an extra holiday every week on a rotation basis.”

The students of Howrah Zilla School, too, have an extra holiday, mid-week.

Heads and teachers of all state-run schools sat together and worked out the strategy ? keeping classes off for an extra day by turn ? to maintain normal functioning.

In Purulia Government Girls’ High School, the crisis took such a turn that it had to temporarily close down its science section in the Plus II level.

“We don’t have a single teacher in mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. We have somehow managed to convince some of our retired teachers to offer voluntary services?. But I don’t think we will be able to continue in this way for a long time. We must have more teachers,” said Bharati Ghosh, the headmistress.

Amazingly, officials in the state public service commission said the recruitment procedure gets delayed because of non-availability of interviewers.