Maharashtra Junior College Teachers Protest Sanch Manyata Staffing Norms

Junior college teachers across Maharashtra are up in arms against the new draft parameters of Sanch Manyata – staffing approval norms for teachers. They allege that the proposed changes – increasing the batch size of science practical from 20 to 30 students, reducing lesson period time from 45 to 40 mins etc, are going to reduce the number of approved posts of teachers, adversely impacting the education in junior colleges.

In a memorandum submitted to the state government in this regard the Maharashtra State Junior College Teachers’ Federation has announced a state-wide protest against the new norms while demanding that existing parameters should be retained. Teachers are planning to gather outside various regional level offices of Deputy Director of Education across Maharashtra where protesters will burn a printout of the new draft rules which they came to know about on May 27, through the system where data is collected.

The Federation is also opposing the way in which new norms are brought, which according to them, not only lacks consultation with them, but is also ready to be implemented without any official declaration to teachers.

SanchManyata or staffing approval norms for teachers are essentially a set of parameters used to fix number of approved positions of teachers based on student enrolment, and few other factors. Among the key objections raised by the teachers’ body is the increase in the batch size for science practicals from 20 to 30 students. The federation has also opposed the reduction of lecture duration from 45 minutes to 40 minutes which is going to reduce workload and result in surplus teachers.

The federation argues that such changes would affect the quality of teaching and learning. Mukund Aandhalkar, state-coordinator for the federation, said that these are two most important modifications among total 11 changes made to the norms, which the federation believes could reduce teaching workforce by an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 posts across the state.

“These are small technical points, but are going to have a huge impact on the number of approved posts of teachers. This is further going to lead to a skewed student-to-teacher ratio which will impact the quality of education,” he said. “Even now there is no official declaration of proposed new rules by the government. We came to know about it through the centralised system where data was being collected,” he added.