By Shakilur Rahman
Patna, Nov. 21: Teachers are being appointed once again in Bihar. This time, teachers will be also appointed separately for Urdu, Persian and Arabic subjects on 12,113 posts. The Education Department has instructed the officers to prepare a complete action plan along with the rules for conducting TET and STET for the appointment of Urdu teachers.
More than 12,000 teachers are going to be reinstated separately in Bihar. More than 5000 teachers will be appointed by BPSC. In fact, Bihar government is going to appoint teachers for Urdu, Persian and Arabic subjects on 17,264 posts. Most of these appointments will be for primary schools.
At present, recruitment will be done on 5,151 vacant posts from Bihar Public Service Commission. Apart from this, there is a need to create 12,113 posts in government schools on which an in-principle agreement has been reached. After formal consent, approval will be taken from the state cabinet.
According to the Education Department, after approval from the government on the posts created, Special Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) and Secondary Teacher Eligibility Test (STET) will be conducted for the candidates for Urdu, Persian and Arabic subjects. This examination will be conducted through Bihar School Examination Committee. This is being seriously considered at the government level.
However, the Education Department has instructed the officers to prepare a complete action plan along with the rules for conducting TET and STET for the appointment of Urdu teachers. An education department official said that 4,932 posts of Urdu subject teachers are vacant in primary schools from Classes I to V, while 1219 posts of Urdu subject teachers are vacant in secondary schools from Classes IX to X. The recruitment process of teachers on these posts will start in the next phase from Bihar Public Service Commission.
In the first week of November, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav have handed over appointment letters to the 1,20,336 candidates selected through Bihar teacher recruitment. Along with the announcement of recruitment of 1.2 lakh teachers in the next two months, the Chief Minister declared the target of creating 10 lakh jobs in one year and a half.
However, political pundits say these appointments are being made keeping in mind the upcoming Lok Sabha and Bihar Legislative Assembly elections. This has happened in the past too. The central and state governments have been bringing populist policies and programs before elections.
In Bihar, there is need for quality education more than that of appointment of teachers. Hundreds of schools suffer from basic facilities. Classes remain empty during study time. The presence of teachers in schools is also negligible. Therefore, parents are forced to give separate tuition and coaching to their children. Parents prefer to educate their children in private schools. Therefore, there is great need to bring changes in the education structure of government schools.
Another issue is that of about four lakh and a half already employed teachers in Bihar. According to TET Teachers Association, parties like RJD, Congress and MLA had promised before the elections that the teachers who are working will be given the status of state employees, and such teachers will be given a relaxation of 10 years in the upper age limit. But now they have to sit for a qualifying examination. If the already employed teachers pass this examination, only then they will be given the status of state employee. After this decision of the government, a very sharp tweet has been posted from the verified Twitter handle of Bihar Secondary Teacher Recruitment, calling the new decision of the government a move ‘against humanity’.
