From engineers to PhD scholars, over 4 lakh apply for guest teachers’ posts in Bihar schools

Bihar has been grappling with huge shortage of teachers in subjects like science, mathematics and English for in higher secondary schools for the last several years.

Attribute it to the increasing number of educated unemployed youth or growing proclivity towards teaching, Bihar government has been inundated with response to its invitation for guest teachers in state’s grossly understaffed higher secondary schools.

Bihar government has decided to appoint guest teachers in state’s grossly understaffed higher secondary schools. (HT File Photo)

From engineering graduates to a large number of doctorates from state universities, the overwhelming response has been from varied fields. So far, nearly 4.71-lakh applicantions have been received from 37 districts, while details from Araria, where the process got delayed due to bypoll, are still awaited.

Sources said the engineering graduates are unlikely to get a chance in teaching as they are not in the top priority.

Preference would be given to postgraduates with teacher’s training and those having qualified secondary teachers’ eligibility test (STET). If they are unavailable, postgraduates with or without teacher training could be considered next. Unemployed M.Tech or B.Tech degree holders would be the last in the reckoning.

A senior education department official said that for 4,257 posts, so far around 8,000 applications have been received from postgraduate candidates having completed teachers’ training. “That should suffice, as the number of applicants is almost double the vacancy,” he said.

Grappling with huge shortage of teachers in key subjects like science, mathematics and English in higher secondary schools for the last several years which led to lakhs of students failing at the intermediate level, Bihar government has now decided to go in for ad hoc measures from the new academic session.

“The hiring of guest teachers will be done at the school level through a panel prepared at the district level,” said Amit Kumar, deputy secondary, department of education.

In the past, despite four phases of recruitment against 12,366 vacancies in secondary and 17,550 in higher secondary, the government could find just 6,631 and 5,423 teachers respectively, with important subjects having virtually negligible numbers. In STET too, the number of candidates qualifying for English, physics, mathematics and other science subjects was very low.

The scenario in higher education is even worse, where the ongoing recruitment process for 3,367 posts has been on for the last four years, while the existing vacancies has jumped to over 8,000. The chancellor has now asked the universities to go in for guest faculty as per UGC guidelines on fixed honorarium as a stopgap arrangement, though in the past it did not work.

Bihar secondary teachers’ association is, however, not convinced that it would be a good idea to go in for more ad hoc recruitment in schools at a time when thousands of STET qualified candidates remain jobless.

“The actual number of vacancies of subject teachers in the plus two schools is much higher than the government estimates and knee-jerk reaction would not solve any problem,” said former MP and general secretary of the association, Shatrughan Prasad Singh.