NEW DELHI: Municipal Corporation of Delhi has hired a private trust to enhance learning skills of students in primary classes. While the decision has been opposed by corporation teachers, MCD has called it a routine exercise.
According to a letter written by the corporation to the trust, the latter has to “assist MCD in running nursery classes in 45 MCD schools by providing one volunteer each to conduct early childhood education activities wherein the focus will be on developing children’s cognitive, physical, social emotional and language skills”.
“This is a clear move towards privatisation of the MCD schools. Why does the corporation need private parties to do the job that teachers were hired for? It has closed down many schools in the recent past,” claimed an MCD teacher.
However, the corporation said that “this is just to help the teachers and not a bid to replace them”. “This is a routine exercise, NGOs and trusts have been given responsibilities in the past to help the teachers and students in enhancing their skills. Teachers should not make something out of this,” said a senior MCD official.
For three years, the trust will conduct two-hour foundational numeracy and literacy classes on all working days for classes 1 and 2. For classes 3 to 5, its responsibility is that the students should be able to read short stories of at least 10 sentences with comprehensive Hindi and be able to write sentences in Hindi language.
