The move of district Collector Siddharth Jain to infuse standards in school education by taking strict measures to prevent copying in the SSC public examinations draws wild protest from almost all the teacher organisations in West Godavari district. He delegated special powers to the respective Revenue Divisional Officers and the mandal-level Tahsildars to undertake random checks at the exam centres and act tough against those found guilty of malpractice.
According to information, two Chief Superintendents, a similar number of Departmental Officers and a member of a sitting squad were placed under suspension at the Zilla Parishad High Schools at Tadimalla in Nidadavole mandal and Pragadavaram under Chintalapudi mandal after a raid by the revenue authorities during the Mathematics-I exam on Thursday on charges of dereliction of duties. In a similar case reported at Pulla under Bhimadole mandal, a Chief Superintendent and a Departmental Officer faced a similar action and as many as 15 teachers entrusted with the invigilation duties were served with show-cause notices. The squads headed by the revenue authorities caught the teachers on invigilation duties off guard and found students indulging in mass copying . Slips were recovered from students and the matter was reported to the Collector. The Collector in turn asked District Educational Officer R. Narasimha Rao to initiate disciplinary action against the `erring’ teachers.
Teacher unions staged a demonstration at the Tehsildar’s office at T. Narsapur mandal on Thursday late evening in protest against the issue of show-cause notices to some invigilators, allegedly holding them responsible for `copying’ by students. The squad, comprising revenue personnel, claimed to have found identical answers in the scripts of at least three students. But the teacher unions said the matter in common was only some mathematical principles which had to be common in every script. All the teacher unions registered a protest with the DEO also against the action of the Revenue Department which only amounted to encroaching upon the autonomy of school education. D.V.A.V. Prasada Raju, the district president of the State Teachers Union (STU), said the revenue personnel were not competent enough to conclude on copying in any subject and demanded reinstatement of the suspended teachers.
