The Chennai Corporation is in the process of inducting as many as 257 part-time instructors to impart art, work and physical education to students in classes VI, VII and VIII in some of its schools.
Part of a Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) initiative, the move seeks to expose middle school students to art education, work education and P.T., as is recommended by the National Curriculum Framework - 2005.
According to T.N. Venkatesh, Joint Commissioner (Education), Chennai Corporation, the teachers will visit the schools three days a week, handling three-hour sessions either from 9 a.m. to noon or 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
“The idea is to catch them young and identify students who are very interested in any of these areas.
We are making it flexible, so that the instructor and school head can work out a schedule that is mutually convenient,” he said. As for Chennai Schools, several middle schools that did not have a huge strength were, so far, not provided adequate number of art or physical education teachers, and were hardly getting non-academic inputs. The schools would usually function with one head and two or three teachers.
With the introduction of this programme, the Corporation is hoping to give students in these schools a chance to learn new ideas and explore their interests.
The arrangement works out fine for both, the SSA and the Corporation, as recruiting fulltime teachers would mean facing a financial burden too. In the case of part-time instructors, the SSA wing will pay them Rs.5,000 per month.
The instructors being inducted as part of the programme are trained secondary grade teachers, who are already registered with the employment exchange.
