HRD ministry rolls back extra workload on college teachers
Direct teaching workload has been
restored to 16, 14, and 14 hours per week for assistant professors, associate
professors and professors respectively
New Delhi: The human resources development (HRD)
ministry on Wednesday reduced the minimum working hours for university
professors, following protests by the teaching community.
“The direct teaching workload has been
restored to 16, 14, and 14 hours per week for assistant professors, associate
professors and professors respectively,” said higher education secretary V.S.
Oberoi after a meeting of the education regulator University Grants Commission
(UGC).
Last month, the UGC in consultation
with the ministry, had fixed the direct teaching workload of professors at 18,
16, and 16 hours per week, plus six hours of additional work related to
practicals, tutorials and fieldwork.
Later in the same month, the ministry
reduced it to 18, 14 and 14 hours per week following protests by the professors
in several universities, including the Delhi University. But the six hours of
additional work per week was kept intact and this was a focal point of protest
for the teaching community who claimed that the aim of the new rules was to
reduce the number of teachers in the country.
Professors were of the view that the
additional six hours beyond the teaching hours were “excess and may hamper
their quality of work”.
On Wednesday, authorities said the HRD
ministry agreed to withdraw the six hours of additional work as well. But the
higher education secretary said that it will take a few days for the department
to notify the changes.
Addressing the fears of teachers,
Oberoi said that there will be “no retrenchment on account of workload...”
UGC chairman Ved Prakash said that ad
hoc teachers will not be sacked as their jobs are not in excess of the
sanctioned teaching posts in universities.
HRD ministry officials said they have
now given more flexibility to professors in terms of research and publication.
The secretary said that writing policy
documents for central, state or local bodies will help in the performance
appraisal of the professors. “Books, book chapters and journals are fine. We
should also expand the horizon so that governments and community can benefit
from their expertise,” Oberoi said.
The ministry also said that it is
introducing an external peer review system for college principals, and that the
review report will be taken into account in case a second term was being
considered or reappointment somewhere else.
The system is already in place at
Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
“The aim of the fresh amendments is to
improve the quality of teaching and learning in India,” Oberoi said.
Meanwhile, the NITI Aayog, the Union
government’s policy thinktank, on Wednesday held a detailed interaction with
principal secretaries and secretaries of school education departments from all
states through video conferencing.
NITI Aayog chief executive Amitabh
Kant and school education secretary S.C. Khuntia asked the states to come up
with suggestions on fostering innovation in schools.
Source | Mint – The Wall
Street Journal | 16 June 2016
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