Higher secondary school teachers engaged in correction of answer scripts staged a demonstration in front of a centre — St. Joseph's Girls Higher School campus — here on Tuesday, pressing various demands, including adequate facilities for teachers.
They charged that even benches and chairs were not provided to them in a proper manner. Furniture meant for elementary school children were given to teachers for correction work. Three teachers had to share a low-level bench. It was very difficult to sit for a long time on the small benches, they said.
With no fans, teachers could not sit inside the rooms of the centre in this hot summer. Several teachers brought the furniture to the corridor of the school and started correction work. There were no adequate toilet facilities at the centre, they said.
Moreover, one teacher had to correct either 30 Tamil medium subject papers or 24 papers in English medium in a day. It took minimum 20 to 30 minutes to correct a single answer script.
Number of answer sheets given to teachers for correction should be restricted to 20 a day, they said.
Five hundred teachers are engaged in the correction work at this centre. They called for an exclusive building with all facilities for paper correction. Such buildings could be utilised for other purposes rest of the year, they said.
Association's plea
Members of Tamil Nadu Postgraduate Teachers' Association demanded that the state government should set up separate directorate for higher secondary education and increase correction fees per paper to Rs.10. Filling up of existing vacancies in upgraded government schools and granting special pay to assistant headmasters were their other demands.
