Teachers call for Reforms in education sector
The new Punjabi administration has been provided with a charter of demands by the Secondary School Teachers Association (SSTA) to address teacher concerns and improve the educational system.
The formal submission of the charter has been made to Sikandar Hayat, the Minister of Education. Important members of the SSTA leadership, such as Humira Nazeer, Nazim Mehmood, Zahid Mehmood, and Kamran Aziz, underlined that a large number of topic expert posts in high school scale 17—4,321 out of 5,582—have been unfilled for an extended period of time.
Showcasing an astounding 77.41% teacher shortfall in the secondary sector overall, they claimed the situation had rendered the educational system nonfunctional. Furthermore, they brought attention to the fact that 70% of secondary and upper schools in the province do not have permanent head principals, which exacerbates administrative difficulties to the point of collapse. In addition, some 14,000 Assistant Education Officers and Senior Subject Specialists have been forced to work under contract for the past ten years with the possibility of being fired.
By executive order, the leaders of the SSTA demanded that Secondary School Teachers (SSTs) in scales 17 and 18 be promoted immediately to headmasters and topic specialists. In order to address these urgent problems, they argued in favour of implementing the in-service promotion quota, which is set at 67% for secondary school teachers.
Additionally, they insisted that the 4-grade method be used to determine promotions for all secondary school teachers. Scale 18 topic specialists should not be appointed to administrative positions; instead, they should be placed as normal school heads. They also demanded that deputy headmaster jobs be reinstated and stressed how urgent it is to hire new people to fill all open positions at the elementary, middle, high and higher levels.
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