Patna: Teachers in colleges and universities of Bihar will now have to submit details of their classes, including what they taught and the number of students who attended, in what appears to be a step towards fixing accountability of the teaching community.
“The orders were given earlier and reissued recently in which college teachers have to fill up a format specifying which class they took, the number of students enrolled for the class, the actual number of students who attended the class, the subject taught during the class,” said a senior officer of the department of higher education.
Another officer from the department told ThePrint that the order was issued last week to monitor college classes in Bihar.
“There is a general complaint among students in colleges after the release of examination dates that the syllabus is not completed by teachers. This order will ensure that the universities and the department gets a complete picture of the syllabus taught inside the class,” the officer told ThePrint.
This would put an onus on college teachers to finish the courses they have been assigned to teach as well as on students to attend the classes, the second officer said, stressing that the order was issued last week.
In the last week of August, the Raj Bhavan had written to vice-chancellors of the state universities stating that the students without 75 percent attendance should not be allowed to sit in exams.
Bihar has as many as 20 state universities. The governor is the ex-officio chancellor of the universities in the state.
Similar orders asking teachers to fill the format specifying the subject they taught in the classroom were issued in the past, said B. K. Mishra, a former professor of Patna University. “This was done in the previous stint of K. K. Pathak as secretary of the education department (from 2015 to 2017). It was compiled for a few years and then discontinued.. Now that he is back in the department, it has been reissued,” Mishra added.
Some universities have seemingly started implementing the order passed by the higher education department. Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University pro-vice chancellor Ramesh Kumar said that his university was implementing the orders of the education department. “The signed format is forwarded to the principal of the college and sent to the university on a daily basis,” he told ThePrint.
“Usually, the crowds of students in colleges are visible only during admission. But, recently, I have noticed that the number of students is up. The rule that students must have 75 percent attendance for filling up exam forms has been present for the last 50 years. But it was not being enforced,” SMD College principal Ram Kishor Singh told ThePrint.
“The insistence of the education department that it should be enforced rigorously has forced the students to return back to the classes. Unfortunately it is out of fear,” said the principal of the college which comes under Patliputra university.
There have been complaints from college teachers that students were not attending classes. Last year, Lallan Kumar of the government-funded Nitishwar Mahavidyalaya in Muzaffarpur district created ripples after he wrote to university authorities offering to return the salary of 33 months as he was unable to take classes due to absence of students.
N. K. Choudhary, a retired professor of Patna University, however, felt that the universities should be allowed to take its own decisions.
“The education department is not supposed to run the universities of Bihar. What is being done is a shameless attempt to violate the state universities Act in which universities are supposed to act like a state within a state for the sake of autonomy,” Choudhary explained.
(Edited by Tony Rai)