if tamil nadu produces sports champions in the near future it will likely bedespite a lackof effort by the state rather than due to any effort by itdata shows that only 40 of 9000 governmentrun middle schools in the state are permitted to hire sports teachers just 044 of all middle schools in other words can offer students professional sports guidance if they appoint physical education teachersthe authorities experts say may have lost sight of the ideal of education to produce allround welldeveloped students with sports as an integral part of the curriculum the education department instead of addressing the issue plans to scrap the post in 1500 more schoolsalso district physical instructor dpi posts across all districts have been lying vacant for more than five years and physical directors on seniority basis are forced to take up additional workthe school education department has started collecting data on student and physical education teacher pet numbers in each schools in the districts it will consider as surplus teachers who have been instructing less than 250 students and redeploy them to other schoolsdepartment officials said the process is still in initial stages and they are yet to take a decision on the issue but did not rule out the option of redeploymentaccording to a government order from three decades ago a governmentaided middle and high school with 250 students will have a physical education teacher and the state could create a new pet postfor every additional batch of 300 students the go said higher secondary schools could have a physical director pd only if thestrengthis400 or more and primary schools would not have teachers for physical educationthe order that was originally designed for governmentaided schools has been followed in government schools as well said sources in the school education departmentfor 9000 government middle schools in the state there are only 40 pet allotted posts and for 7500 government high and higher secondary schools there are only 5576 posts including 660 pd posts according to the sources not all schools that have posts have teachers the sources said there are more than 1200 vacant posts across the statethe department has appointed around 5000 parttime teachers in schools but the last appointment was made in 2012 leaving many posts vacantthousands of schools already function without fulltime pet teachers and this move of the government would further increase the number of schools without sports teachers said raja suresh of the tamil nadu physical education teachers physical directors association tnpetpdaonly a meagre percentage of students from schools with no pet could be found at the sport meets and that too because of their personal interest raja said adding that without a pet teacher sports talent could not be identified in younger childrencondemning the move wellknown educationist prince gajendra babu said if some children are provided an opportunity that others are denied it would violate article 14 of the indian constitution which guarantees the fundamental rights of citizensmeanwhile according to the sources the department