Jharkhand: Staff Shortage Cost On Quality Of Edu'n

In Jharkhand, the Goverenment Schools seems to have a low quality Education in prior with 40,000 vacant seats of Teachers where in the future of 45 lakh students studying in the Govt Schools are at concern.

Based on the RTE Act (Right To Education Act), the student-teacher ratio must be 30:1 from Class 1 to 5 and 35:1 for Classes 6 to 8. But, these schools look like they are violating the RTE rules and career of more than 45 lakh students are endanger.

Did you know that, with about 43,000 Government schools in the state, there are 27000 recruited teachers against a total of 67,000 sanctioned strength. Beside, 90% of the schools are running without headmasters.

According to the official of HRD, the TET (Teachers Eligibility Test), is an examination meant for recruitment of teachers in the state, which has not been conducted for the last two years. Inspite, the dates for the exam was announced and later cancelled the examination.

The Member of the Jharkhand Primary and Secondary Teacher's Association Parsuram Tiwari said "We are facing a lot of problem in teaching large number of students at a time because of staff crunch. The shortage of 40,000 teachers in the state is adversely affecting the education system as a whole. The department says that they will recruit teachers but they fail to do so each time".

Mr.Tiwari said that TET was conducted in 2011 against vacancy of 18600 posts generated against a total of 25000 vacant seats. In the advertisement announcement, there was a provision of taking two seats of examinations. The candidates passing TET would have to take another exam. But, only 5000 teachers passed the examination.

Later, HRD made a sudden announcement that they would not conduct the main exam as the candidates passing the examinations are less when compared to the vacant posts and that they would be directly recruited.

As a result of this, several candidates challenged the decision of the HRD in court, owing to which the state government's efforts to fill up the vacant posts of teachers suffered a major setback when the Jharkhand high court cancelled TET conducted by the Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC) in 2011.

District superintendent of education in Ranchi, Jayant Misra said, "In order to meet such a crisis of teachers, the HRD in collaboration with the Jharkhand Academic Council will conduct TET." According to him, exams will be conducted by the end of October.