Stick on truant teachers

Mou Chakraborty & Romita Dutta
Kolkata, April 2, 2007
The bell has gone for truant teachers. To check lecturers from bunking classes, colleges and universities from now will have to pin up their attendance record on the notice boards.
Higher education minister Sudarshan Ray Chaudhuri admitted on Monday that a “vicious cycle” was operating in colleges where many teachers have a tendency to skip classes. Replying to a question by Jharkhand Party’s Chunibala Hansda on a polytechnic college, Ray Chaudhuri said in Assembly it was true that many college teachers do not attend classes.
He has asked the university to make it mandatory for colleges to pin up on a monthly basis the total number of classes allotted to a teacher and the actual number of classes he or she has taken.
The Higher Education Council has already given the green light to it and a circular in this regard will be sent to all colleges and universities in the state shortly.
The West Bengal College and University Teachers Association (WBCUTA) has welcomed the move. “For many years, teachers have been maintaining a self-assessment diary where they have to note their attendance and this is shown to the principal. But according to the new rule, the teachers will now have to make the record public and make it accessible to the students. It is true that some teachers take fewer classes. We can punish them but the best method would be to make them feel guilty by keeping them under pressure. Those who are good will rectify themselves,” said Tarun Patra, general secretary of WBCUTA.
Some teachers, however, feel that it will not solve the problem. “What is the guarantee that the teachers will give the true information? Some teachers sign in the registrar but do not take classes. How will the authorities find out if the teacher is declaring the truth,” asked A.R. Chowdhury, professor of physics at Jadavpur University.
To resolve this problem, students will have to be more alert, feels the SFI, which has long demanded visibility of teacher-student contact. “We have often received complains about teachers not taking classes regularly. The students too will have to be proactive, they will have to point out if the teachers put up wrong information,” said Apurbo Chaterjee, state president of the SFI.
University teachers want the credit for their 24-hour service to research, MPhil and masters students. “It is true that many teachers skip classes and that needs to be pointed out. But what about the university teachers who keep helping students every day irrespective of holidays? There is no credit for such work. Some thing must be done to evaluate their contribution too,” said Arun Bandhyopadhyay, dean of arts at Calcutta University.
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