Delhi govt schools still short of 25,337 permanent teachers

NEW DELHI: Despite its best intentions to provide top-notch educational facilities to school students till Class XII, the Aapled Delhi government is failing to get any relief over its various litigation and tussles with the Central government.

With a dearth of 25,337 permanent teachers in Delhi government schools, the Directorate of Education (DOE) is compensating the shortage by periodically hiring guest teachers to fill the vacant posts, until their replacements are hired.\

The DOE could not recruit permanent teachers for five years. To remedy this, in 2017, the Delhi Assembly passed the Regularisation of Services of Guest Teachers and Teachers Engaged Under the ‘Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’ Bill, which advocates to regularise 15,000 guest teachers.

Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia had personally appeared before the Delhi High Court in the matter of Guest Teachers, noting they have played an important role in transforming government schools and their removal will hurt education in these schools.

With Sisodia present at the hearing, the high court bench said that if guest teachers are qualified, they can sit in the recruitment examination and if they qualify they can be retained.

“Sisodia always said there were 50,000 guest teachers, of which 17,000 had passed the Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET). 15,000 of these, who fulfilled all the criteria, have been made permanent.

“The remaining 35,000 will work on a rotation basis and will ‘stand a chance’ to be made permanent once they clear the eligibility test,” said DOE sources.

The Delhi government’s inability to hire permanent teachers for its 1,009 schools is a consequence of litigations.

Even parents of students and teachers in government schools are of the opinion that the stand-off between the Delhi government and the Centreappointed Lieutenant Governors is the primary cause of the problems coming in the way of hiring teachers.