Ongole: The teachers staged a sit-in in front of the district collectorate here on Saturday. Members of the Federation of Andhra Pradesh Teachers' Organizations (FAPTO) demanded the state government to immediately withdraw the proposal to merge the third, fourth and fifth grades in primary schools with high schools. FAPTO district in-chrage Parre Venkata Rao said that the splitting the primary schools and merging three primary classes in the nearby high schools will increase the dropout rate instead of doing any good to the students. He said that it is illogical to shift the students from the primary schools which are beautifully renovated under Nadu- Nedu now to the high schools where they lack even classrooms.

He advised the government to fill the 25,000 teacher vacancies first, strengthen school education, and then discuss with the experts who know the ground level realities on the hiving of primary schools before taking the right decision. Another Fapto leader P V Subba Rao demanded the government to continue English and Telugu media in high schools, allot headmaster posts to all primary schools, and award promotions to teachers on a monthly basis. 

He also demanded control of the private education system in the state. Chennupati Manjula said that the government abhors the right to speech. The Fapto leaders announced that the state leadership asked them to attend schools by wearing black ribbons on August 16 as a mark of protest against the government's decision. FAPTO leaders Gurunatha Sarma, B Srinu, Atluru Ammaiah, Veeraiah, Paleti Suvarna Babu, M Sarath Chandrababu, P Ashok, Y Venkata Rao, Lakshminarayana, Sk Abdulla, Sarath Babu and others also participated in the programme.

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