The exploitation of teachers of unaided schools today is similar to that in the days before the introduction of an education policy by the government of EMS Namboodiripad, Leader of the Opposition V.S. Achuthanandan has said.
He was speaking after inaugurating the ‘Save Education Convention’ organised here on Wednesday by the Higher Education Protection Forum.
It had come to light that in many unaided schools teachers were being made to sign on vouchers which indicated high salaries, while in reality, they were paid a pittance. This was at a time when government was sanctioning more unaided schools, he said. An earlier UDF government had sanctioned 700 unaided schools. Now, there was news that the government was preparing to give sanction to all pending applications for unaided schools. If that happened Education Minister P. K. Abdu Rabb would gain an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, he said. The unchecked spread of the unaided sector also meant the destruction of ‘public spaces’ in the education sector, he pointed out.
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The higher education sector was now a milch cow for the Indian Union Muslim League, Mr. Achuthanandan said. The Kerala State Higher Education Council had been politicised. It was to make this sector more efficient that the previous Left Democratic Front (LDF) government introduced the semester system for graduate courses. Now, this system which was accepted as a model by the UGC, was being sabotaged, he said.
The government had also cancelled the decision of the previous LDF government to hand over to the PSC all non-teacher appointments in universities. The ‘auction’ to appoint Vice Chancellors to various universities in the State had commenced, he added.