A school in North 24-Parganas that had one math teacher for Classes V to X may have none now.
A school in east Kolkata, which has long denied students a chance to study physics because it did not have a teacher, now fears it will have to stop offering chemistry, too.
Many of the sacked teachers taught science or maths, subjects for which it is already difficult to find good teachers, principals said.
Several schools this newspaper spoke to said they were left with no or one teacher for a subject.
Over 25,700 teachers and school staff stand to lose their jobs after Monday’s Calcutta High Court order. The court could not tell who got the jobs legally and who got them illegally and decided to cancel all the appointments based on a 2016 recruitment process.
- In a school in south Kolkata, the sole teacher whotaught chemistry in higher secondary is one among the thousands. She also taught physical science to Classes IX and X.
- A school in North 24-Parganas will be without a math teacher from Classes V to X.
- In a school in east Kolkata, the authorities said they might have to scrap chemistry as a subject in HS for want of teachers. The teacher who taught the subject is one among the three the school is set to lose after the court order.
- A school in Laskarpur, Murshidabad, is worried about how it will cope with the departure of seven teachers, two of them for physics and chemistry.
“We had 31 teachers for about 4,500 students. It was difficult but we somehow managed. But with seven less, how will we run the school?” said Mohammad Jahangir Alam, headmaster of the Laskarpur school.
“We will have no physics or chemistry teacher in HS and it upsets all our plans,” said Alam.
Many of the government-aided schools have children who are first-generation learners with no one to guide them at home. They are dependent entirely on schoolteachers.
For many of them, education had come to a standstill during the Covid-induced lockdown.
Sarbari Sengupta, headmistress of a girls’ school in south Kolkata, said: “Many of our children come from
families where the adults are daily wage earners and cannot afford private tuition... It is even more difficult to find women science teachers,” she said.
The school’s sole chemistry teacher in HS is doing her PhD and would take the girls to science museums to grow and sustain their interest in science, said Sengupta.
The future of the science stream in Avinanda Ghosh Dastidar’s school in east Kolkata is uncertain. “We cannot offer physics in HS because we do not have teachers. If we lose the chemistry teacher and do not get a substitute, we might not be able to offer chemistry in Class XI from 2024,” said the principal.
“But students have to appear for Madhyamik and HS,” she added.
Pulak Roychowdhury’s school in North 24-Parganas stands to lose three teachers, including the lone math teacher for Classes V to X. The school clerk could also lose his job.
The headmaster is worried about who will fill in for the clerk. “During this period we have a lot of data entry to do for the Madhyamik results. We also have online work for Class XI admission, all of which might be impacted.”