Thiruvananthapuram: The fixation of staff in public schools has run into uncertainty for the fourth consecutive year.
Over the past four years, the government has recruited teachers from the PSC rank list only for retirement vacancies. Though the list has thousands of eligible candidates, no appointment has been made to new posts.
Meanwhile, 11,000 temporary teachers were appointed in various public schools across the state in the current academic year. Their salaries were being paid by the government.
According to the norms, the fixation of staff should be done in proportion to the students' strength before July 15 every year. As usual, the department assessed the students' strength on the sixth day of the academic year. The General Education Department had decided to complete the fixation of the staff process by August 21.
However, the deadline was extended to September 8 after education department offices cited a shortage of time to visit the schools. The date was further extended for three months. Still, the process has not been completed.
The current academic year would end in four months. However, there is no certainty over when the fixation of the staff process would be completed. The process was not carried out during the 2020-21 and 2021-22 academic years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the staff fixation process was done just before the end of the 2022-23 academic year, it did not provide the desired result.
Decreasing student strength
Though 6005 new posts were found till Class X in 23,123 schools in the previous academic year, 4,563 posts were dropped against the backdrop of divisions getting reduced due to a shortage of adequate student strength. Appointments to the remaining 1,442 posts were not made, and with the commencement of the new academic year, the assessment became irrelevant.
The public schools have reported a year-on-year decrease of 94,639 students in the current academic year Additionally, the department issued an instruction to assess the student strength based on Aadhaar. However, thousands of students in the state do not have proper Aadhaar details.
The department has given time till December 12 to furnish Aadhaar details. The move would likely further delay the fixation of the staff process.
