Coimbatore: With more than 1,000 government higher secondary schools left without full-time computer science teachers and the state government reluctant to appoint sufficient number of teachers, the students are struggling.

Only one computer teacher is allotted per school, a government school teacher said. “There are over 2,700 higher secondary schools in the state. But only 1,438 regular teachers are working in the schools. The vacant posts are filled either with teachers appointed by parents and teachers associations (PTA) or part-time teachers. The part-time teachers work only three half days a week,” he said.

“It is difficult for even the full-time teachers to make the students understand the concepts in detail before December with the allotted periods. We conduct special classes to complete the portions. But the situation was not tough till the state government introduced public examination for Class XI and split the computer syllabus into three – Computer Science, Computer Technology and Computer Application. We were taking combined classes for all the groups. But we can no longer do so,” he said.

While even the regular trained teachers struggle to teach, how could the part-time teachers manage, asked T Arulanantham of the Tamil Nadu High and Higher Secondary school Government Teachers Association (TNHHSSGA). Reciting the recent government direction that states that the science teachers would be trained to handle Computer Science for classes up to Class X, he said that most of the science teachers have only peripheral knowledge about the subject and they cannot be trained to teach the it within days.

Insisting that the state government should appoint separate teachers for Computer Science, V Kumaresan of the Tamil Nadu Unemployed Computer Teachers Association said that they are willing to teach the students if the government permits, as there are more than 50,000 Computer Science teacher aspirants in the state. “In 2011, the state government had recruited about 3,000 part-time Computer Science teachers to handle classes from VI to VIII. Half of them had completed diploma courses. The department has deputed such teachers to handle higher secondary classes due to teacher shortage,” he said.

“If the government is reluctant to appoint us on regular basis, we are even ready to teach the students full-time and receive part-time teacher’s salary,” he added.

Source:"Times of india"
'Govt schools lack computer teachers'