In what is being viewed as a permanent solution for shortage of teachers in the Government schools, the State administration is planning to assign the task of recruiting contractual teachers to the Principals. A similar model of the recruitment of contractual or guest teachers is adopted by the Kendriya Vidhyalayas (KV) which ensures that the students don’t face any problem in absence of regular teachers.
The secretary, school education, R Meenakshi Sundaram said that since the issue of appointment of guest teachers is pending in the Supreme Court (SC), the department has now decided to request the court that it should be allowed to hold walk in interviews for contractual teachers in the government schools till the process of permanent appointments in these posts is completed. “The idea is to give a free hand to the school Principals to appoint teachers in these schools on purely temporary basis. After the approval of the court this proposal would be brought before the state cabinet,’’ he said.
The education department has adopted different models of appointment of contractual teachers. The department normally follows a centralised system of recruitment of guest teachers but in appointment of guest teachers last year, the department adopted a system of district- wise process of recruitment. This time the department is planning to hand over the responsibility of guest teachers to the Principals of the schools.
At present a stipend of Rs 15,000 per month is paid to the guest teachers and at the time of appointments the candidates are required to submit an undertaking that they would not make any demand for permanent appointments.
More than 5,000 posts of LT and Lecturers are at present lying vacant in the government schools of the State. As the process of permanent appointments is time consuming, the state cabinet decided to fill these posts by guest faculty as an immediate though temporary measure to provide teachers in schools. However some of the former Guest teachers challenged the new drive in the SC which issued a stay on the appointment of Guest teachers. The issue is pending before the SC since then.
To add to the problem of the department the state government has recently issued a ban on promotions last month till the final judgement of High Court (HC) on the issue is delivered.
In the department 50 percent of the vacant posts of LTs and Lecturers in Government schools of the State are filled by the promotions.