Education

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United Kingdom: Parents have clear views on the education system, it’s time they were heard

Noticias

Europe/United Kingdom/26.06.18/By Charles Parker/Source: www.telegraph.co.uk.

On an almost daily basis we hear from educators, politicians and commentators on what needs to change in education. But we rarely hear from parents, despite the fact they have a clear perspective on the outcomes. It’s their children that the system teaches and they see first hand whether it’s working.

Recent research from the Baker Dearing Educational Trust shows that 80 per cent of parents think the current education system needs to change to reflect 21st century Britain, which suggests they have concerns.

The research surveyed 1,000 parents with teenagers at mainstream schools and their responses were compared with 450 parents whose children attend University Technical Colleges (UTCs), technical schools for 14-18 year olds.

The results found that for two thirds (66 per cent) of parents their biggest fear is that their child will not find a job when they leave education and nearly half (48.1 per cent) of parents said they felt stressed about their child’s education.

It is completely understandable that parents are concerned about the future and whether their children will secure the careers they deserve.

Parents are hearing about high youth unemployment and graduates not being able to find jobs. Their children are staying at home longer and finding it harder to rent, let alone buy, their own homes.

«It is completely understandable that parents are concerned about the future and whether their children will secure the careers they deserve.»

Futurist, Rohit Talwar says that youngsters need to be ready to have 40 jobs during their career and work, potentially, up to the age of 100.

Although no one really knows what’s in store it’s clear that the way we’ve been working and living is going to change greatly. So for UTC parents it must be reassuring to know that their child is confident and has a clear understanding of the industry they want to work in.

Nearly two thirds (64 per cent) of mainstream school parents surveyed said they wanted a greater variety of choice in the type of school for their child and 69 per cent said they wanted the option to select a technical education if it reflected their child’s talents.

It’s really hard for schools to keep pace with the modern world of work, where the skills requirements are changing all the time. In order to cope with these changes, young people will need to be well grounded in basic behaviour, social skills, communication and teamwork. They will need to have the ability to adapt, learn new skills and master technologies that haven’t even been conceived yet.

Recently, Nicky Morgan showed she had been listening to working parents when she offered them the right to request childcare from their school that reflects a full working day.

I agree that it is important that schools align themselves with the working day for three reasons. First, it helps children in their transition between school and work. Second, parents will be pleased that children remain in school where they are safe and supervised to do their homework and extra-curricular activities.

But finally it makes sense on a social level for everyone’s quality of life. It keeps learning and homework within the working day rather than dragging into the evening when parents and children are too tired to concentrate.

UTCs are ahead of the curve on this as they have been operating on a working day since the first one opened.

Schools are working hard to deliver the talent employers need but employers need to change too. They need to take a long-term view of their skills requirements and integrate better with the education system.

In Europe, collaboration is normal, but in the UK the worlds of education and employment are largely separate.

Employers and the university control the governing bodies of UTCs. This means they are required to understand more about education and it helps the senior leaders of the school to better understand the needs of employers. It’s testing for both sides, but it seems to be paying off.

The research showed that about eight out of 10 parents believed the UTC was preparing their child for the world of work compared to just over 6 out of 10 parents with children at mainstream schools.

The skills challenge we face will not be solved by one single system or education program. This is not just a problem for the Government, educators or industry. Our research show parents have clear ideas and should play a larger role in engineering future solutions.

Source of the notice: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/11960332/Parents-have-clear-views-on-the-education-system-its-time-they-were-heard.html

 

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‘The importance of great teaching on children’s success’

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Europe/United Kingdom/By Peter Tait/ 25.06.18/Source: www.telegraph.co.uk.

As a society, we spend an inordinate amount of time, resources and money looking at how to improve the quality of education in our schools.

The questions we ask ourselves are always the same. How do we improve the quality of teaching and learning? (and its corollary, our examination results?) How do we make our children more motivated and competitive? And how do we get children to value and ‘own’ their education?

And yet, after all the talk of new methodologies and curricula; after new and different methods of teaching and models of assessment; after all the time and money spent on technology; after the personalisation of education and differentiated teaching; after learning styles and habits of mind; after mindfulness and Every Child Matters; after the debates about continuous and formative assessment; and after all the constant tinkering, bureaucratic and legislative, with their greater focus on data and compliance, we seem to be no closer to establishing what are the most important factors that make children succeed.

The only consistent factor we can identify is the role of the teacher, whose abilities and skillset, knowledge and enthusiasm are crucial in determining the success or otherwise, of the children they teach.

Teaching, after all, is about engagement, about getting children to listen and switch on. The best investment any government can make is to get the most effective, the most talented, the best teachers they can in front of the children.

By best, I don’t mean those who are the best qualified, but those teachers who know how to enthuse and connect with children regardless of their own levels of education. I mean those teachers who can properly engage with children and teach them by inspiring and challenging them.

Sometimes the pathway dictates that the process comes down to hard work rather than inspiration, but teaching is all about the relationship between teacher and pupil more than anything else.

Children will work harder for a teacher they respect, even if they demand more and insist on discipline and high standards. One can only speculate what would have been the impact if all the money spent on technology had gone instead into lowering the teacher-pupil ratio and improving the identification, selection and training of the most effective and passionate teachers. Where would we be now? In a somewhat better place, I would suggest.

I look back at outstanding teachers from my own teaching career and remember, in particular, one woman, whose ability with children was legendary. She was strict, uncompromising, but children wanted her approbation.

One particular year she took on a particularly difficult class of Year 4 children, two of whom had considerable physical and intellectual difficulties and could not even print their names and yet finished the year with impressive cursive writing – achieved through repetition, practice, discipline and unwavering high expectations.

She made such a difference to their young lives and all who were fortunate enough to have her as a teacher.

Good teachers don’t need the security of extra resources and technology that, evidence suggests, can detract rather than add to the learning process.

While they may use resources to embellish their lessons, they will not allow the resources to become the lesson. The best teachers are always wanting to do and find out more about their own craft, pushing out the boundaries of their learning and teaching, which is why many exceptional teaches re-work or even discard their teaching notes on a regular basis and look for new topics, and ways, to teach.

This lesson came home to me when I was asked to introduce art history into the sixth form in a New Zealand school and finding – after the subject had been offered, and places filled – that my knowledge of the period (Italian Art, 1300 – 1650) was almost as deficient as were my resources.

That year, with a few old text books and slides, I learnt alongside the students and at the year’s end, we were the top performing department in the school with one student in the top 10 in national scholarships.

The next year, I went to Italy and soon had the best resourced art history department anywhere with videos and CD Roms, slides, a library of outstanding books of reproductions, computer programmes on every aspect of the course, but my students never did quite so well ever again.

I think they learned better, as I did, by having to think more, by having to eke out what they could from the meagre resources, by having to think and having a teacher learning alongside them. There was no hiding place for any of us.

Teachers need to keep learning and growing – it is not a profession for the cynical or indifferent. The best can be identified by their enthusiasm and interest in pedagogy. They are not characterised by their own high academic performance, but by a thirst for passing on the benefits of education.

They may be unorthodox, idiosyncratic, employing a variety of approaches to get children to want to learn and to question what they are being taught. They are typified by their passion, their non-negotiable standards, breadth of interests, high expectations, understanding of how children learn, empathy, an insistence on greater self-discipline and by their relationship with their pupils.

Interestingly, children know who the best teachers are, even if they try and avoid them in favour of the more popular variety who may make their lives easy. They often criticise them to their parents for being too demanding and only realise later the opportunity they have squandered.

These are the teachers who entered the profession in order to make a difference. And they do.

Source of the notice: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/12201014/The-importance-of-great-teaching-on-childrens-success.html

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‘High degree of motivation’: Augmented, virtual reality transforming classrooms

Pallavi Singhal

Por Pallavi Singhal

When their school got 3D printers a few years ago, Brenden Davidson’s year 10 technology class was finally able to rotate and fully explore their designs.

Then in 2016, the technology leader of learning at St Mary’s Cathedral College started bringing augmented and virtual reality into the classroom.

«It’s an easier way to do it, we’d finish the design work and put it in augmented reality so they could view their work,» Mr Davidson said.

Now, he’s going even further with the technology.

«When I first started, I was just using it as a tool to display their work. Now I’m trying to use it as a content creation tool,» Mr Davidson said.

«With virtual reality, you’ve got sensors in your hand and you’re using your whole body to design something and it’s in real scale in front of you. Traditionally you’d have a keyboard and a mouse, which is not an overly natural way to construct something.»

Mr Davidson won the Premier’s Teachers Mutual Bank New and Emerging Technologies Scholarship last year and recently completed a study tour of England, Sweden and America to look at how augmented and virtual reality are being used in education around the world.

«What I learnt on the tour was that AR and VR can be successful at many levels and it’s very easy to jump into it at the free level,» Mr Davidson said.

«If students are using their smartphone, they’re bringing the technology with them and they can just use augmented reality at no cost. With virtual reality, you can get headsets for a couple of dollars.»

Mr Davidson said the technology is useful across all subjects, with companies now beginning to augment textbooks.

«You can scan the page and a 3D solar system will appear and you can rotate and move that around,» he said.

«It can help students digest complex concepts at a higher rate, we look at things in a 3D perspective so it’s more natural and easier to understand than 2D things.

«And there’s a high degree of motivation, students are quite excited by it because some of them are having that experience with games but it’s something they’ve never done in the classroom.»

The dive into educational uses for technology by schools and businesses comes amid warnings that smartphones and other devices may be affecting students’ focus in the classroom, as well as their level of physical activity and quality of sleep.

Finnish education expert Pasi Sahlberg recently said smartphones should be banned, at least at the primary school level, which was supported by NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes.

However, Mr Davidson said industry developments and widespread phone ownership are making tools such as augmented and virtual reality far more accessible in schools.

Mr Davidson will speak to Australian teachers about the potential uses of the technology at conferences this year and will also write a report on the subject that will be published by the NSW Premier’s Department.

«There’s a level of awareness [about augmented and virtual reality], but when I demonstrate it at different places teachers can see the benefit of it,» he said.

«You can go on virtual excursions to anywhere in the world, students can get an immersive experience in Africa, the Great Barrier Reef.

«With the amount of money that’s being invested in this, it’s going to become a tool students can utilise in all their education.

«And teachers can see how they can quickly and easily put it into what they’re already doing.»
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India’s failing education system: It is our children’s future, not our ancestor’s pride, that deserves our outrage first

Anustup Nayak

Por Anustup Nayak 

Here is a sample of what has outraged Indians over the last year: a violent mob attacked a bus full of schoolchildren to protect the honour of a mythical queen. Riots erupted between caste groups over a battle fought two hundred years ago. Young people were killed for falling in love outside their faith and for eating the meat of their choice.

We are willing to die and kill for dead queens, sacred animals, and caste history, all symbols of our past. But why is our response so muted when it comes to our children and youth, who symbolize our future?

Angry high-school students are out protesting on Delhi streets over the leaked Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) grade 10th and 12th question papers. Data analysis conducted by Geeta Kingdon shows that between 2004 and 2016, the median percentage score in CBSE’s school leaving examinations have been systematically inflated by 8%. Only 40% of our 14-18-year-olds can calculate the price of a shirt sold at a 10% discount and less than 60% could read the time from an analog clock, according to the findings of the Annual Status of Education (ASER) report. And, less than 17% of India’s graduates are employable.

None of these revelations are new. We have known for years that our education system is failing. Children are going to school but not learning much beyond “floor level tasks.” Yet, there has been no big bang policy shift, very little sustained media scrutiny and indeed no parent uprising.

Why does the bleak future of our young people not stoke our collective outrage?

Students, parents and employers all benefit from good education. But they lack the voice to press for change. Politicians, bureaucrats, and media can influence education from the outside, but they find it of no use to advance their agendas.

Till recently, the software outsourcing industry boomed. Companies flocked to hire at campuses of even second rate engineering colleges. Most of these graduates are ill equipped to do entry level jobs. Corporations spend months to reskill them rather than getting entangled in lobbying government to fix college teaching.

Politicians do not win elections, or bureaucrats get promotions on an education platform. It takes years for good education policies to show results and even for bad ones to fail. Few in public office have that kind of patience to sow and wait. Fewer have the gumption to take on the entrenched unions, cartels, and ideologues who block meaningful change in schools and colleges.

Children are the most important beneficiaries of a good education yet the ones with least power to shape it. When children are in school, they are either unaware of how little they are learning or afraid to speak up. College students sometimes raise their voices in protest, but mostly on issues tangential to their learning.

Parents choose to exit the school system rather than pressuring it to change. Millions of parents pull their children out of broken government schools and enroll them in low-fee private schools. Then they find out that even private schools do not deliver much better results. The better-off among them find refuge in tuition centres. The rest make do with what they get.

However, this pattern of exiting without a voice need not be fait accompli for Indian education. “The time for the richer Indian to secede has come to an end,” notes philanthropist Rohini Nilekani in her article for this column “The end of secession” (13 November 2017).  “The foul air in Delhi is a perfect example of a great leveller. Rich and poor alike must breathe in its health hazards,” Nilekani argues.

The leak of CBSE question papers may be the fateful “foul air moment” for Indian education. Fates of children living in Gurgaon skyscrapers hangs in uncertain balance alongside their mofussil peers.  Consider this. There will soon be 100 million under-skilled and under-employed young people on our streets. Many will be desperate, leading them to harass, loot, and molest, or to harm themselves if not others. A student commits suicide every hour in India, unable to fulfill aspirations, cope with failure, or find emotional support, according to IndiaSpend reports.

Would we keep quiet if these were your children or mine? Will they find a college of their choice? Will they qualify for a job when they graduate? How will we grow our businesses when there are so few skilled people to hire? What India story will we sell to attract foreign investors? What myth will politicians spin to get the disillusioned to vote this time?

Now is the time to cry out for an excellent education for every child.

Parents, students, and employers must demand that our institutions deliver real capability and not empty certificates. Let us stamp our vote to those leaders who can make this happen. Let us not keep quiet till we get what we deserve. But with the right to raise our voices comes the responsibility to stay invested. Media must capture this moment and ensure that those in power heed this call. It must hold them accountable for action.

It is our children’s future, not our ancestor’s pride, that deserves our outrage first. Only then can we begin to unleash the potential of our 100 million young minds.

Source of the article: https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/indias-failing-education-system-it-is-our-childrens-future-not-our-ancestors-pride-that-deserves-our-outrage-first/

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Race- Based Suspensions Undermine Undermine Education of Black Youth

Marian Wright

BY MARIAN WRIGH

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last month, “K-12 Education: Discipline Disparities for Black Students, Boys, and Students with Disabilities,” reminds us once again that suspensions and expulsions continue at high rates and offer grave risks to students.

The report by this federal monitoring agency reviews data from the Education Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection on school discipline trends across the country, provides a more in-depth look at discipline approaches and challenges faced in five states, and reviews past efforts by the Departments of Education and Justice to identify and address disparities and discrimination.

The GAO reminds us all of the profound ways school discipline affects students and can impair both their childhood and adulthood. For example, “research has shown that students who are suspended from school lose important instructional time, are less likely to graduate on time, are more likely to repeat a grade, drop out of school, and become involved in the juvenile justice system.”

It also notes children experiencing school discipline often have behavioral issues affected by challenges outside the classroom, which are often more acute for poor children – especially children of color, who are more likely to be poor.

The report makes a strong case that there is still much work to be done and we must insist that this administration keep moving forward with solutions – building on what we know is working. We must resist current attempts to move us backwards and instead protect students from discriminatory practices. There are good superintendent-led examples out there to build on.

The GAO’s analysis examines six categories of discipline: out-of-school suspensions, in-school suspensions, referrals to law enforcement, expulsions, corporal punishment, and school-related arrests. It examines the data by race/ethnicity, sex, disability, and poverty level, and included studies of illustrative school districts in California, Georgia, Massachusetts, North Dakota, and Texas.

Overall, the GAO found that Black students, boys, and students with disabilities were all disproportionately disciplined in the 2013-2014 school year (the latest available data) and that disproportionality is widespread and persistent despite the level of school poverty, type of disciplinary action, or type of public school attended (e.g., traditional, magnet, charter, alternative, or special education).
A closer look at some of the sobering findings:

Race not poverty explains the disparities in discipline. This report is the first time discipline rates were analyzed by poverty level, and results show that race is a more important factor in discipline decisions than poverty. Even in the most affluent school districts, 7.5% of Black boys had been given an out-of-school suspension compared to 1.8% of White boys.

On the other hand, disproportionality “was particularly acute for Black students in high-poverty schools, where they were overrepresented by nearly 25 percentage points in suspensions from school.”

Black students represented 39% of students suspended from school even though they accounted for 15.5% of all public school students. These disparities can be seen as early as preschool where Black children accounted for 47% of students suspended from preschool even though they were only 19% of all public preschool students. Black boys have the highest rate of out-of-school suspension overall and Black girls have the highest rate of all girls.

Boys were two-thirds of those disciplined, though they accounted for just 50 percent of all public school students. Even as early as preschool boys accounted for 78% of children suspended from preschool but were only 54% of all public preschool students.
Students with disabilities represented 25% of students who have been referred to law enforcement, arrested for a school-related offense, or suspended from school but accounted for just 12% of all public school students.

School districts included trauma, mental health issues, social media (including bullying and other conflicts), immigration status, gang involvement, drug use by students or parents, lack of parental guidance and support, and situational barriers like transportation, jobs, and responsibilities at home among the many challenges that affect student behavior or attendance and can lead to discipline issues. There is a clear recognition in finding after finding in the report that more attention and resources are needed to help schools reduce disparities in discipline, not less.

That overall finding is critically important now as Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos seems intent on the Department doing less rather than more to protect children from discrimination in suspensions and expulsions and other areas and reversing what progress has been made.

In 2014 the Department of Education and Department of Justice jointly released an extremely helpful school discipline guidance package to address these kinds of inequities in school discipline and reinforce the meaning of the non-discrimination requirements under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Yet the Education Department under Secretary DeVos now threatens to withdraw that guidance. The Children’s Defense Fund strongly supports the 2014 guidance package and the GAO report’s findings help reconfirm why it must remain in place for our nation’s children.

The guidance reaffirms the obligation school districts and those directly serving students have to ensure discrimination does not interfere with a student’s right to learn and succeed. It makes clear to all superintendents and other administrators, teachers, aides, parents, and students that students have legal rights to be free of discipline policies that push students out of school and can promote serious inequities in their educational opportunities.

The law in this area is clear and has been for more than 50 years; the guidance brings legal protections together with practical steps districts can put in place through their school discipline policies and practices to comply with these nondiscrimination requirements. It has helped communities recognize and praise good policies and challenge the bad. Positive discipline practices are key to ensuring all children are treated fairly and all students can feel respected and supported in safe schools where they have equal educational opportunities.

The Children’s Defense Fund has been highlighting the disparate impact of school discipline policies on children of color and poor children since the publication of our 1975 report, School Suspensions: Are They Helping Children?

Too much of what we learned then remains true today. It is critically important that the 2014 Title VI Guidance be maintained and that it not be made easier for schools to push children of color, boys, and children with disabilities out of school with impunity in a disgraceful race to the bottom. We must not in any way weaken our efforts to move forward to create a level education playing field for all children.

Source:

http://www.blackstarnews.com/education/education/race-based-suspensions-undermine-education-of-black-youth.html

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England: Student loans ‘heading for trillion pounds’

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Europe/England/20.06.18/y Sean Coughlan/Source: www.bbc.com.

The tuition fee system for England’s universities is ripping off students and giving taxpayers poor value for money, says a parliamentary committee.

The House of Lords economic affairs committee revealed evidence the student loan book would grow to over £1 trillion over the next 25 years.

The committee attacked a «deeply unfair» system of fees and loans.

But the Department for Education said its review of fees would «make sure students are getting value for money».

This hard-hitting report accuses the government of using «accounting tricks» to conceal the real cost of higher education and to pile up huge debts for future generations.

It calls for «immediate reforms» – such as cutting interest rates on repayments and restoring grants for disadvantaged students.

‘Astonished’

Committee chairman and former Conservative minister, Lord Forsyth, said they had also been «quite astonished by the complete collapse in part-time education».

The report warns of the lack of funding for vocational training – and claims that the apprenticeship system has been damaged by artificial targets invented to sound impressive for a manifesto promise.

The cross-party committee, with two former chancellors and two ex-chief secretaries to the Treasury, says the student loan system seems to have been used for a «fiscal illusion» to make the deficit look smaller.

«The thing that shocked me – and I thought I was pretty unshockable – was that I had not understood that by moving to a system of funding through loans, because of the accounting methods of the Treasury, it was possible for George Osborne [then chancellor] to appear to increase funding for higher education by £3bn but at the same time cut his deficit by £3.8bn,» says Lord Forsyth.

The cost of unpaid loans will not be included until they are officially written off after 30 years.

Lord Forsyth says a parliamentary question revealed how much student borrowing was really piling up for the future.

By 2044, when many of today’s students will still be paying off their loans, the student loan book will have grown to more than £1tn, rising to £1.2tn by 2049.

«The public argument for cutting the deficit was so that debt wasn’t handed on to the next generation.

«But for this generation, being asked to pay these loans, when they’ve eventually paid them off, they’ll suddenly find there’s a bill for £1.2tn.

«I hadn’t realised that was happening.»

‘Devastating consequences’

But Lord Forsyth says this system has had «devastating consequences».

It has produced excessive interest rates, set to rise again to 6.3%, which the committee says should be no higher than the rate at which the government borrows, at present 1.5%.

The conversion of means-tested grants into loans has meant that the poorest students end up graduating with the biggest debts, says Lord Forsyth.

And he warns that the current repayment system was more expensive for people in middle income jobs such as nursing, rather than high-paid lawyers or financiers, who would pay off their debts more quickly.

«The people who get screwed by this are those in the middling jobs,» says Lord Forsyth.

«This was all done on the basis that it would create a market in higher education – and that has failed, there isn’t a market.»

Lord Forsyth says that there is no meaningful consumer choice or competition – and he dismissed the system for rating teaching quality in universities, the teaching excellence framework, as a «bit of a joke».

«Because no-one ever turns up to look at the teaching,» says Lord Forsyth.

‘Quantity rather than quality’

The report says that the student finance system has failed to recognise the need to improve vocational skills and to help those wanting to re-train.

Part-time student numbers have fallen by about 60% over the past decade – with accusations that the funding system is based around school-leavers beginning full-time degree courses.

«There’s been a huge distorting effect. It’s a huge mistake,» says the committee chair.

Lord Forsyth says there have been concerns about the apprenticeship policy – and the committee heard suggestions that the target for three million apprentices was not the result of any strategy, but was chosen as an impressive number for a manifesto promise.

The consequence of such target setting, he says, is to «encourage quantity rather than quality».

It means more attention is paid to the numbers starting than completing and there were signs that some employers were re-badging existing training as «apprenticeships» as a way of getting funding.

«There is clear evidence that what the economy needs is more people with technical and vocational skills. But the way that the funding for fees and maintenance operates makes it pretty well impossible for us to meet that demand,» says Lord Forsyth.

‘Value for money’

Alice Barnard, chief executive of the Edge Foundation, which promotes vocational education, said the report «clearly highlights how the funding bias in our higher education system has favoured universities at the expense of choice and opportunity for young people».

The head of the MillionPlus group of new universities, Greg Walker, said the report had produced «robust evidence» to support the return of maintenance grants and to find ways to make universities more accessible to part-time students.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: «We agree that for too long young people have not had a genuine choice post-16 about where and what they wish to study.

«That is exactly why we have overhauled apprenticeships to focus on quality and why we are fundamentally transforming technical education, investing £500m a year in new T-levels that will provide a high quality, technical alternative to A-levels.

«On top of this, we are undertaking a major review of post-18 education and funding, to make sure students are getting value for money and genuine choice between technical, vocational and academic routes.»

Source of the notice: https://www.bbc.com/news/education-44433569

 

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India: Teacher in sexual harassment row a repeat offender

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Asia/India/20.06.18/Por Payal Dhawan/Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

LUDHIANA : A day after Raikotpolice booked a government school teacher for allegedly sexually harassing a Class VIII school, the education department suspended him on Monday. In the suspension notice, director of public instructions (secondary) Paramjit Singh said the teacher was accused of sexual harassment by another girl student in 2016.

The official said the teacher had at that time given an apology for the incident. In the suspension notice, a copy of which is with TOI, the department has given 15 days to the teacher to give an explanation on the accusation against him.

The notice has stated that this was the second time the teacher had been accused of sexually harassing a student, so he was being suspended by the school. The education department’s action came a day after Raikot police registered a case against the teacher for allegedly sexually harassing a Class VIII student of his school.

The FIR was lodged after the school’s head had filed a police complaint against him, on the direction of Punjab State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights. Following the complaint, police had booked the teacher under Section 354A (sexual harassment) of the Indian Penal Code and under sections of Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

It has been alleged that the schoolgirl had to stay back at school because of bad weather, while most student had left for home, on May 2. The girl and the teacher were alone when he saw the girl, grabbed her and harassed her, it has been alleged.

The girl escaped from there and informed her family about the incident on reaching home. Her family had complained to the school against the teacher on May 4. An internal probe by the school had indicted the teacher. However, he was let-off after the matter was resolved by the village’s panchayat, and no one approached the police.

However, some village residents reported the incident to Punjab secretary (education) Krishan Kumar, who ordered local education officials to submit a report after inquiry. The report of district education officer also indicted the teacher. Taking suo-motu notice of the matter, the Punjab State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights summoned the school head and district education officer (secondary) Swaranjit Kaur.

The DEO presented a report which indicted the teacher. After this, the commission directed DPI (secondary) Paramjit Singh to suspend the teacher and the education department to lodge a police complaint.

Source of the notice: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ludhiana/teacher-in-sexual-harassment-row-a-repeat-offender/articleshow/64547454.cms

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