Chandigarh: The Punjab School Education Board was in for a serious shock when 220 teachers from government schools failed to explain the poor results of the Class 10 students in English. The Board had called the teachers for a meeting in Mohali town to inquire why more than 80,000 students failed to clear the English test.
Education minister Dalit Singh Cheema was present at the meeting where all the teachers were given a proforma to explain the reasons for the poor performance, only to be left at his wits' end dealing with the educators. When one teacher remarked that, “English are international language,” he glaringly pointed out the grammatical error in the four lettered sentence. To which the teacher argued he had forgotten to bring his reading glasses. A fuming Cheema was seen asking, “What is the relation between the spectacles and the grammar.”
Amongst other reasons given by the teachers were, “The main reason is our school has situated remote area.” “Posts need to be fulfilled.” “It class was very weak from 6 by chance.” Not just the grammar, the spellings were a major disaster as well, with 'practical' spelt as 'precticls', 'should' as 'shoud', 'lack' as 'leak' and 'vacant' as 'vacent'.
A startled minister told the teachers, “Now I realise that the students are not at fault. In fact, teachers are responsible. Those being taught by such teachers should not even dream of passing the exams.”
Cheema has constituted a committee comprising educationists to chalk out a long term plan to improve their language skills, and their first task would be to study the problem in depth and then work out a crash course for the teachers. Also, the schools board will work out details of a long term training programme for English teachers, which will be personally monitored by the education minister.
