Primary education board reserves 50 pc PTC seats for HSC science students

“Generally,there are more Arts students who take up Primary Teachers Certificate (PTC) course. But they are good in teaching Social Science and other Arts-related subjects. Further,not many Class XII Science students opt as teachers in primary schools. With a 50 per cent reservation,we are trying to promote more science teachers to take up PTC course. With more teachers from science background,the base in science subjects will be strengthened,” said R P Gupta,Secretary,State Primary Education Board.

The State Primary Education Board has from this academic year decided upon subject-specific teachers for Classes V to VII. In primary education,the class teachers are responsible for teaching all subjects,but from this year,specific subject teachers will impart lessons to the students.

“This is to improve the quality of education so that the teachers can concentrate on a specific subject,thereby increasing the comprehension of the subjects by the students,” said S B Garasia,Deputy Secretary of Primary Education.

At a recently-held training programme,the schoolteachers were given a subject to choose from and were trained at the Cluster Resource Centre on the particular subject of their choice.

Though they will teach all the subjects in the lower primary sections,they will teach only specific subjects in Classes V to VII.

“We are incorporating it for Science,Maths and English as we have found the students to be weak in these. The students should get the basic grounding of the subjects in Classes V to VII,” said Gupta.

But while many of schools have started introducing subject teachers,others still await the recruitments.

“We have implemented subject specific teachers in over 70 per cent schools. But there are many

schools where there is a huge gap in the students-teacher ratio. We are still waiting for the new teachers so that other schools can be catered to,” said an education inspector with the Vadodara District Primary

Education Office.