Recruitment of 489 primary school teachers put on hold

Prayagraj: The recruitment of teachers in 489 primary schools, which are recognised by the basic education department, has been stopped. These schools are operated and funded by the state’s social welfare department.
As per the letter of the under secretary (administration) Ashok Kumar Yadav to the director (social welfare department), dated May 11, the committee, constituted under the chairmanship of the respective district magistrates for the approval of teachers’ recruitment in these schools, has also been dissolved.
Along with this, a request has been made to rationalise the student-teacher ratio in all these schools.
A senior official shared with TOI that when the social welfare department compiled the information of teachers working in its funded schools and the total count of enrolled students in them from the district social welfare officers in October 2021, it was found that a total of 71,006 students were registered in 489 schools. Against the sanctioned 3,676 posts of teachers, 1,759 teachers are working in these schools. That is an average of 7.5 posts of teachers are sanctioned per institution in these schools, offering education from class 1 to class 5 to enrolled students whose numbers were very less. Some schools have only 23 to 25 teachers.
The compilation of information also revealed that the total number of sanctioned posts of teachers in the schools ranged from 23 to 25 — unusually high for primary schools as usual, so many posts are sanctioned only in intermediate colleges or higher education institutions.
The government believes that after the universalization of education, the usefulness of these primary schools of the social welfare department has ended to a great extent as schools have been established every 1 to 1.5km by the state basic education department.
It mentions that there is no justification for running schools which have less than 30 students enrolled in them as a government-aided institution. By getting the students of these schools admitted to other nearby schools of the basic education department, the teachers working here have been asked to be adjusted in other schools.
For this, there will be adjustment by the social welfare officer (development) at the district level, the divisional joint director of education at the divisional level and the director outside divisions.
The government has also made it clear that if needed in future, teachers will be recruited through a competitive examination in government-funded schools of the social welfare department just as teachers are being recruited in government-aided junior high schools.