This is one phone call that government school teachers across Gujarat cannot afford to miss. And once they answer, the voice at the other end will ask them a series of questions from a template about the location of their assignment for the day, the task, and who assigned it. If they are on leave, they will have to provide details, including the number of days and the approval authority.
This, in short, is the state government’s new “realtime technology enabled” surveillance plan to “keep an eye” on over 1.95 lakh school teachers after the new academic session starts on June 10. The aim is to improve the quality of education by ensuring that teachers stick to their assigned tasks on a daily basis. Officials say the system was devised after various discussions and reports concluded that poor monitoring of teachers resulted in absenteeism and “non-seriousness”.