RTE Act violation in Rayagada:84 tribal schools left to decay due to bureaucratic negligence & urban bias
Dr.Badal Tah,Odishabarta
Rayagada, October 23: Despite a sweeping administrative reshuffle involving 839 teacher transfers, Rayagada district’s primary education system remains in structural paralysis. Across the district, 84 primary schools continue to operate with a single teacher, and several—including Tilesu Primary School, where 70 students are enrolled—have been left completely devoid of instructional staff. Kashipur block is the worst hit. While rural and tribal classrooms starve for educators, urban schools in Rayagada, Gunupur, and Bissam Cuttack are operating with an oversupply of teaching staff. This imbalance persists due to an institutional blind spot: unauthorized urban deputations, non-academic administrative burdens, and policy inertia that legislative interventions have failed to correct.
Under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, primary schools are legally required to maintain a Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) of no more than 30:1, with a minimum of two full-time teachers per school to ensure multi-grade instruction is viable. Operating 84 single-teacher schools and maintaining schools with zero staff (such as Tilesu) violates these statutory minimums. Leaving single educators to simultaneously handle Classes 1 through 5 across multiple subjects effectively denies rural children an education, converting schools into day-care facilities rather than learning centers. The central paradox is that the teacher shortage in rural schools coexists with an over-concentration of teachers in urban centers like Rayagada, Gunupur, and Bissam Cuttack. Teachers officially assigned to interior pockets secure “deputations” into urban or peri-urban schools through administrative channels without revoking their primary rural posts. The district administration executed 839 general transfers without cancelling these irregular deputations, demonstrating an administrative reluctance to challenge entrenched urban postings.
In the minority of interior schools where a lone teacher is present, instructional hours are routinely hijacked by non-teaching government duties: Teachers are redirected toward voter registration, census field work, and seasonal disaster/flood relief operations. For a multi-teacher school, these duties cause disruptions; for a single-teacher school, deploying that individual closes the school entirely for the duration of the duty.
The failure cannot be attributed to a lack of awareness. Multiple legislators—including Appalaswamy Kadraka, Satyajit Gomango, and Nilamadhab Hikaka—have repeatedly brought this deficit to the floor of the Odisha Legislative Assembly. That these interventions produced zero structural reform indicates a breakdown between state-level legislative oversight and district-level bureaucratic execution.
“The School & Mass Education Department should order a blanket cancellation of all informal, administrative deputations to urban schools, mandating that personnel report back to their sanctioned rural stations.
Deploy an open-access rationalization dashboard mapping every school’s PTR to end discretionary transfers and eliminate surplus faculty in town centers. Strictly enforce Section 27 of the RTE Act, exempting single-teacher schools entirely from non-educational duties (except decennial population census, disaster relief, and general elections) to preserve classroom contact hours. Provide financial and housing incentives for teachers posted to high-deficit blocks like Kashipur and Kalyanasinghpur to curb absenteeism and transfer lobbying”, recommends Bidulata Huika, who earlier worked as a Govt school teacher and Chairperson of Child Welfare Committee. Dibakar Sabar, District President of Odisha Adibasi Manch, has urged the district administration to proact on the said recommendations at the earliest.
