Teachers wanted: Jugaad, bribe must

Updated on: Monday, July 11, 2011

Three years ago Rashesh Mehta had to flash a recommendation letter of an MLA, make a phone call to a trustee of a school and even brandish his familial ties with a former education minister to land the job of a school teacher. Mehta's interview ran for a good 45 minutes and he was finally given the job for a salary of Rs 8,500. Mehta had just passed his standard XII exams and was to teach students of class VIII and X in Surat.

In 2008, Smita Vaghela, a fresh BEd graduate had received an interview call letter from a grant-in-aid school for a teacher's post in Rajkot. The only problem was that the letter reached her after the interview date, "This was a calculated delay as the letters were sent a few days late so that aspirants who were behind me in the merit list got the job. I was asked to pay a bribe of Rs 1.5 lakh to get the job. I walked out of the principal's room. I abandoned the idea of teaching after that," says Vaghela.

The two teachers here are an indicator of a non-transparent system that exists today in the teacher recruitment process. In 2006 the People's Commission on School Education (PCSE) had demanded an autonomous Gujarat School Education Commission (GSEC) to be created by legislative action. The commission was to incorporate various state agencies dealing with school education within its fold to monitor teacher's recruitment process across state.

The commission according to PCSE would have made it compulsory for schools to recruit teachers according to the number of students studying, number of subjects taught and number of classes in the respective schools.

In service training would have been compulsory for all teachers, in private, grant-in-aid and government schools, which includes a short training programme of three weeks for teachers in a nearby regional center.

The GSEC would have also ensured a provision where recruitment of teachers would have been done by a staff selection committee which comprises the nominees of the managing committee of the school, the DEO and some external experts.

"The DEO today needs to be freed from administrative responsibilities so that the officer can be seen more in the field inspecting schools, be part of teacher's interview boards more often than sitting in office clearing salaries and arrears of colleagues and teachers throughout the year," says a senior official of the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board (GSHSEB)

Times of India

Teachers wanted: Jugaad, bribe must

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