| Patna University vice-chancellor Shambhu Nath Singh (right) after meeting Puta members on the university campus on Monday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey |
Patna, Aug. 29: The row over students assessing their teachers reached a solution today. Patna University vice-chancellor (VC) Shambhu Nath Singh has assured the teachers that the system was just to find out who the students considered their role model and that the move had nothing to do with an “assessment” in the real sense.
The solution was arrived at after a meeting was held between members of Patna University Teachers’ Association (Puta) and Singh.
A delegation led by Puta general secretary Randhir Kumar Singh met the VC at his chamber and told him that the process was having an adverse impact on the morale of the teachers. “The process has affected the relationship between students and teachers,” Randhir told the VC, adding that the teachers who have been given low marks by the students are feeling down.
The VC, after listening to the plea of the teachers, assured the delegation that he had no plans to get the teachers assessed by the students. “The process is just a mechanism to find out the teachers who are students’ role models,” he said.
The VC assured the delegation that it is not an assessment but only a process to select the most popular teachers among the students. The VC also stated that he had not received any direction from University Grants Commission on this issue but it was the university’s internal exercise on the basis of which the teacher adjudged as the best by the students would be felicitated on the occasion of Teachers’ Day.
Randhir told The Telegraph: “The VC claimed that there were some misconceptions regarding the format on which the teachers were to be assessed by students but after meeting the delegation, they have been sorted out.”