Women teachers have edge over male colleagues in Bihar

Updated on: Monday, April 11, 2011

Women teachers have fared well in comparison to their male colleagues in Bihar, where 8,884 out of 1,09,612 primary teachers failed to qualify in an evaluation test conducted for assessing them for a hike in their salaries.
Director of State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT) Hasan Waris told that compared to the first evaluation test in which the pass percentage was 98.3 per cent, the second evaluation test for primary teachers, also known as panchayat teachers, has a lower pass percentage of around 92 per cent.

"It means altogether 8,884 primary teachers have failed to qualify for the second evaluation/efficiency test," Waris said.

While women teachers fared better with their pass percentage at 50.13 per cent, the male teachers trailed behind with a pass percentage at 49.87 per cent, he said.

Of the total 1,11,612 candidates, the results for 1,09,729 were declared and the number of the candidates who failed stood at 8,844 with women alone accounting for 70.4 per cent of them, State Human Resource Minister P K Sahi said.

Waris said normally, questions from the text books of Class I to Class VIII were asked during the competence test.

While 70 per cent of the questions were from text books of Class I to Class VIII, 30 per cent were earmarked for the aptitude test, he said.

The idea behind inclusion of questions from text books was to test whether primary teachers had the requisite skill to teach students from primary level upto Class VIII.

Those teachers who qualify the efficiency test organised once in every six months will be eligible for a hike in increment and will retire at 60 years of age.

"Those who have failed will certainly not get the increment and we will decide how to go about them," Principal Secretary (HRD) Anjani Kumar Singh said.

The qualifying marks for the 100-mark paper with questions from Mathematics, science, English and Hindi is 30.

Asked about the fate of the teachers who were unsuccessful, Bihar Education Project (BEP) director Rajesh Bhushan said it was essential for the teachers to pass the test.

"The state government has in principle decided that it will be essential for the teachers to pass the tests," he said, adding that it was yet to be decided how many chances would be given to them to qualify in the efficiency test.

Primary school teachers, known as panchayat teachers, are selected on the basis of merit and the government has so far appointed 2.50 lakh teachers in over 51,000 primary schools in the state.

Saharsa, Supaul, Madhepura, Kishanganj, Araria, Purnia and Madhubani districts reported maximum failures of teachers. These are also the districts with poor literacy records.

With Bihar achieving huge success in enrolment of children in schools, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has said the state government would now focus on ensuring quality education which would require quality teachers.

However, chief Opposition RJD, Congress and LJP had opposed the teachers' selection process.

Opposition leader in the state Assembly Abdul Bari Siddiqui said his party has always been opposing the selection process of primary teachers.

Had the government held tests for teachers' appointments, incompetent people would not have become teachers, State LJP Chief Pashupati Kumar Paras said.

Women teachers have edge over male colleagues in Bihar

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