Senior education department officials on tour of north Tripura and Unakoti to inspect (!) state of school education

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, February 19, 2025

At a time when the entire school education system is virtually on the verge of collapse owing to crippling shortage of teachers exacerbated by non-recruitment and forced engagement of teachers in so-called fruitless training programmes at the cost of students, a group of senior officials of the department of secondary and elementary education head by director N.C.Sharma and OSD Abhijeet Samajpati have left on a tour of north Tripura and Unakoti district to inspect the schools and monitor the state of education there. Even though the critical state of school education is well known the official team went on this pleasure trip perhaps to ensure spending of the residual funds in the custody of the department before the end of the financial year.

Sources in the education department said that yesterday the team led by N.C.Sharma visited several schools in hill-top Bhangmun and Kanchanpur subdivision while today they are on so-called inspection tour of selected schools in Dharmanagar and Kailasahar. The team is expected to return to Agartala on Friday after visiting a few schools in Dhalai district. Describing the inspection tour as a ‘pleasure trip to expend surplus annual fund’ sources in the education department , speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the officials themselves know took well the problems afflicting the school education all over the state and the ‘trip is only a cosmetic exercise to show they are so serious (?) about resolving the crisis in the schools’.

Meanwhile, a teacher undergoing the latest round of the countless and useless training imparted by dubious and money-spinning NGOs that have gripped the state for money said that besides the shortage of teachers the forced engagement of teachers in ‘absolutely useless’ so-called trainings at periodic intervals have become a major problem for the school education system. “There is nothing new in the training programme conducted by the shady money-spinning NGOs but we are forced by the department to waste our time on this even as students in the schools are deprived of lessons due to non-availability of teachers ; who will explain the real problem to the officers of the government unless they have the minimum sensitivity to appreciate the real problem?” asked a visibly irritated teacher undergoing the farce in the name of training. What is more astonishing is that teachers deputed to undergo the training are not given proper food , snacks and tea because the suppliers are given works in lieu of hefty commission paid to petty ‘Mandal’ level leaders of the ruling party. The dubious suppliers try to mint as much money as possible at the cost of the trainee-teachers.