Assam to induct guest teachers in schools to fill vacancies temporarily

GUWAHATI: The Assam government is looking to appoint guest teachers at its schools for the first time to mitigate the shortage of teachers, Education Minister Ranoj Pegu said on Sunday. At present, about 8,000 posts of school teachers are lying vacant across the state and a considerable number of them are reserved for Scheduled Tribe (Hills) category candidates only, he said.

In an interview to PTI, Pegu said that the state cabinet has already approved the proposal of appointing guest teachers and the Education Department has initiated preliminary works to appoint them in some schools till permanent faculty members are appointed. The government at first wants to implement the proposal by forming alumni associations in the schools, especially in the historical schools, and not by direct interference, he added. "These alumni associations will play an important role in quality education in schools. They will try to get guest teachers till permanent ones are appointed so that classes are not hampered," Pegu said. He said that if the alumni associations cannot get good teachers, then the government will rope in the retired teachers for the job.

"Our main purpose is to provide quality education to our school students. The guest teachers will be provided a fixed amount as monthly remuneration and it will not be on a per-class basis like those in colleges or universities," he said. The minister also clarified that these guest teachers will not be like the contract teachers, who are already working in thousands of schools across the state. Pegu said around 8,000 posts are lying vacant across the state. "Of these, 4,000 each are vacant in the elementary and secondary level. Recently, we have appointed 11,000 teachers.

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A significant number of the vacant posts are reserved for ST-Hills category. Unfortunately, we are not getting suitable candidates to appoint in the reserved category," he said. He, however, said the government will fill these 8,000 vacancies by the end of the current financial year. There are around 2.4 lakh teachers working in about 45,000 primary and 4,300 secondary schools across the state. He also said that the transfer of teachers, which has been stopped for almost three years now, will begin soon through an online application portal, which was approved by the state cabinet. "We will start with the mutual transfer process, the orders of which will be issued within this month. The next will be the single transfer by the teachers under various grounds," Pegu said. He emphasised that teachers with health grounds and women for marital reasons will be given priority in case of the single transfer scheme.

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The minister said that around 3,000 schools will be amalgamated with neighbouring schools within this financial year. "This cannot be termed as the closing of the schools. We will amalgamate for improving the overall quality of the schools. This exercise will continue in future also," he added. The Assam government had started the process of amalgamating one school with another for various reasons, including less number of students, poor infrastructure, lower teacher-student ratio and higher operational costs.