Maharashtra: Over 42,000 teaching jobs vacant for past 10 years in state

Over 40000 posts of teachers in schools across the state have been vacant for the past 10 years Of these 17503 are vacant in schools run by Zilla Parishads while 25000 posts are in private aided schools etc According to education department officials efforts are being made for new recruitments through the Pavitra PortalThe approximately 42503 posts have been vacant since 2012 when the government prohibited recruitments The recruitments had restarted through the portal in 2019 but stopped after the pandemic Zilla Parishad schools have now decided to fill the posts on contractual basis for the time being due to the rise in the number of studentsRecruitment prohibitedAfter May 2 2012 the government prohibited the recruitment of teachers in primary intermediate and upper secondary institutions due to various issues such as scams in hiring It also conducted investigations into irregular recruitments It had also rejected the proposal to create different divisions in suburban schools for students from closed down schools in South MumbaiAlso readMaharashtra No of private schools go up by 73 per cent in 10 yearsIn 2012 the government prohibited the recruitment of teachers in primary intermediate and upper secondary institutions due to various issues such as scams in hiring Representation picThe government conducted a survey in 2015 and discovered incidents of irregular recruitments and extra teachers at various educational institutions Many schools were found to have fictitious students on record so they could hire more teachers According to a census the teacherstudent ratio was less than 125 and in certain schools it was 19 The ideal ratio is 130 or 135In December 2015 the former state education commissioner declared the approval of 32 teachers in Pune illegal Similarly 98 false approvals were confirmed in Washim district All the appointments were cancelled and salaries drawn by the appointees for preceding three years were instructed to be taken backThe state government also came across 6000 cases of irregular appointments of teachers in stateaided schools across Maharashtra after 2012In January 2016 the school education and sports department again prohibited new teacher appointments pending final decisions on the central selection process for teachersrsquo recruitment A circular was issued directing the commissioner of school education director of the primary education department and the director of the secondary education department not to approve any such recruitmentAs per the United District Information System for Education UDISE data for 202021 there are 110114 schools across the state with a total of 767 lakh teachers ldquoThe department is collating the exact number of teacher vacancies across the state Some districts have shown surplus teachers however we do not have a clause where we can transfer them to schools in districts where the posts are vacant We are working on the issuerdquo said a senior official from the state school education departmentlsquoIssue not resolvedrsquoSunil Shejule a coordinator of Marathi Shala Sansthachalak Sangh and a member of Marathi Abhyaas Kendra alleged that no government was able to resolve this issue ldquoGovernments have changed ministers have changed from Vinod Tawde to Varsha Gaikwad but all have failed to resolve recruitment issues At the same time corruption in the system is just rising Now Deepak Kesarkar is the education minister isnrsquot this an issue that the department should take up on priorityrdquo he said Shejule added ldquoThis is a time when schools across the country are working to bridge the learning gap in students How can it be achieved when there is a dearth of teachers Students in the state have suffered and the government has failed to take note of this We have reached out to the school education department multiple times since 2012 however even after a decade there has been no resolution of the issuerdquoAnother matterThe Maharashtra State Council of Examinations MSCE recently disqualified 7880 candidates for their involvement in the manipulation of marks in the 20192020 Teachersrsquo Eligibility Test TET While 7500 of the 7880 candidates allegedly paid for forging results to show them as lsquoeligiblersquo in the final exam 293 candidates secured fake certificates projecting themselves as eligible candidates after the results IAS officer Sushil Khodwekar Tukaram Supe commissioner now suspended of Maharashtra State Council of Examinations Pritesh Deshmukh director of G A Software the firm which was responsible for conducting the exam and Abhishek Sawrikar consultant education department were arrested in the matter However this has further hampered the issue of teachers recruitment42503No of approximate teachersrsquo posts vacant in the state