A year after the launch of Padho Punjab - a project of the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan in collaboration with Pratham, a non-governmental organization, government school teachers and master trainers are at loggerheads. The government schoolteachers allege that master trainers (also called as master clusters) behave very rudely with them and sometimes threaten them of giving wrong feedback to the higher authorities of the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan and Padho Punjab.

Sharing their grievances, a group of government schoolteachers said, “These master trainers who are otherwise supposed to help us, keep dictating terms. Suppose a teacher has gone to washroom and the class is without a teacher. The master trainer asks very rudely in front of the whole class, “Where were you?” or “Why the students are sitting idle?”

Ruing that the development had left them demoralized, some teachers said, “Sometimes, some of them make video clipping of the teachers chatting among themselves. Then, they admonish the teachers for chatting and ignoring their classes, and threaten that they would show the video to the higher officers seek action against them.”

It needs to be mentioned here that these master trainers are also government teachers but have been trained with better teaching skills under the Padho Punjab project.

Davinder Singh Boha, state coordinator of “Paho-Punjab”, said, “The work of these master trainers is to monitor the teachers to know if they are using the teaching skills taught to them during training of ‘Padho Punjab’. Secondly, their duty is to support teachers in the teaching work. Suppose a teacher, is absent or is busy in some other work, these master trainers are supposed to teach the class, so as to avoid loss of studies. We tell these master trainers to give us positive feedback also about a school and its teachers.”

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