Thiruvananthapuram: A new academic year has started in Kerala with all the 66 government arts and science colleges being headless, no vice chancellors in nine universities, and thousands of teacher posts lying vacant in schools. Ironically, this situation exists even as the state government announced that the main aim of the new academic year would be to raise the higher education standards of Kerala to international levels.
In all the 66 regular colleges under the government, ‘in-charge’ principals have been overseeing their functioning over the past several years. The Higher Education Department recently constituted a search committee to recommend regular principals to accommodate aspirants who had earlier raised complaints over the selection process. However, it is alleged that the move is intended to appoint people close to the authorities.
Meanwhile, there are no regular vice chancellors in the following universities: Kerala, Technological, MG, Malayalam, Fisheries, Law, Agricultural, Kalamandalam, and CUSAT. With the government itself opposing the move of the universities to suggest a representative to the search committees, there is no chance for new vice chancellors to be appointed at these universities in the near future.
Similar is the situation in the General Education Department, where there are no regular Deputy Directors (DDs) in half of the districts. This follows a delay in issuing promotion orders to eligible officers. There are numerous vacancies for District Education Officer (DEO), administrative assistant, accounts officer, and assistant provident fund officer.
The departmental promotion committee (DPC), headed by a PSC (Public Service Commission) member, is now scheduled to meet on June 13 to recommend promotions. However, it would take several more weeks for the promotion list to be published.
A still worse situation exists in government schools, where thousands of teacher posts are vacant as around 5,000 teachers retired from service over the last three months. Even though the General Education Department issued orders to fill the vacancies with temporary teachers, these appointments are not being carried out through the employment exchanges.
Meanwhile, thousands of youths are awaiting a government job after clearing PSC tests. However, their appointment is not taking place as the Finance Department has objected to the vacancies reported by the Education Department based on the staff fixation of the previous academic year.
Moreover, the appointment of over 11,000 teachers in aided schools since 2018 has yet to be regularised following a dispute over the reservation of differently-abled candidates.
This academic year, the Education Department identified 6005 new posts in 2,313 schools. But, as there was a decrease in the number of students, 4,563 posts were abolished, and appointments had to be carried out for the remaining 1,442 posts. Again, the Finance Department opposed posting teachers to these 1,442 vacancies, leading to more uncertainty.