Teachers demanded an increase in funds for school maintenance, including toilet cleaning. | Photo Credit: File Photos
The Ministry of School Education and Literacy (DSEL) warned to register criminal cases against teachers who use students to clean toilets. DSEL has banned this practice. The circular is governed by the recent number of incidents where students were asked to clean the toilets in schools, despite the ban.
The Commissioner for Public Instruction has recently issued an circular who stated that if there are such cases, the block educational clerk concerned and the headmasters of the schools concerned will be responsible and disciplinary measures.
The circular, who noticed recent such cases, has raised a strong objection to teachers who violate earlier orbiting circles issued to all government schools so that students should not be made to clean the toilet.
Demand for an increase in grant
However, teachers demanded an increase in funds assigned by the State Government to maintain schools, including toilets, which claims that the lack of funds and the unavailability of regular toilet cleaning regularly forces schools to use children to clean them.
The government provides grants for the maintenance of a government school based on the number of students studying there. For schools with less than 30 students, the government provides 4,000 GBP per year and provides 40,000 GBP for schools with more than 1,000 students. These funds must be used for cleaning toilets, drinking water arrangement, office stationery, purchase and repair of sports equipment, among other things.
“Drinking water, purchase of office records, furniture and sports equipment and other necessary items for the school should be purchased from this fund. Our school has more than 150 children and a large amount of grant provided by the Ministry goes to the toilet cleaning.
Even these modest funds are often not released neither fully nor in time. For example, in recently closed fiscal fiscal of 2024-25, DSEL has earmarked Crore 114.59 GBP for maintenance of 42,136 government schools, but released only 45.15 crore, in two installments 3 September 2024 and 3 February 2025.
School leadership in rural areas also complains about the lack of work that has clean toilets. “There are no people available in rural areas to clean the toilet. Therefore, we need to bring cleaning agents from urban areas. We have to pay at least 500 to 750 GBP for cleaning the toilet. For this reason, it is difficult to clean the toilets every day.
Published – April 7, 2025 9:16
