Deogarh: After remaining closed for 10 long days, a government high school in Odisha’s Deogarh finally reopened for the students on Monday. In fact, this is not because of the COVID-19 scare, which has reeled the country’s education system drastically, the closure was due to protest for the appointment of a teacher in PCM (Physics, Chemistry, and Maths) subjects.
Tankabir High school which comes under the Reamal block of this district was closed af6ter scores of students and parents demanded the appointment of a PCM teacher. The school was locked by the parents since September 9 as there was no PCM faculty for the students in the school, who would teach Physics, Chemistry, and Maths-like subjects.
Finally, the school has been reopened today after District Collector Sudhanshu Mohan Samal intervened and appointed a PCM teacher for the neglected high school.
“We were demanding for a PCM teacher as there were no teachers in the school who will teach Physics, Chemistry, and Maths to our children. Earlier, the school had one PCM and one CBZ (Chemistry, Botany, and Zoology) teacher but the former one got transferred to another school. Our children were unable to get teachings of those subjects,” a parent said.
“Finally we got the intervention of our District Collector into the matter and one PCM teacher was appointed today. We met the Collector and urged him to take steps regarding the same. And till the recruitment of the new teacher, we staged a protest in front of the school. Even our agitation continued for 10 days, none of the staff from the government’s education department came to the spot and took note of our protest,” he added.
Meanwhile, such negligence of the Education Department has raised question marks on the government’s steps towards empowering education.
While some places of the state got transformed schools, Tankabir High School is one of the examples where students are still fighting to get basic facilities for their studies.
Two years ago, the same incident took place at this school, which led to the closure of Tankabir high school for 23 days.
