From Our Special
Correspondent
GUWAHATI: The Assam education department will fill up a substantial number of vacant posts of teaching and non teaching staff by August 2020 under various schemes besides addressing issues of contractual, state pool and Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) teachers.
Addressing the media here on Saturday, state education minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma said 15,000 regular posts of elementary teachers would be filled in the next six months.
The director, elementary education, has already issued advertisements for filling up 9635 regular posts and recruitment will be done before March 31, 2020. In addition, another batch of 6000 posts would be filled up subsequently.
“Apart from that, the government will fill around 8000 vacant posts with the teacher eligibility test for secondary education conducted recently and results to be declared in February,” Sarma said.
The education department is also mulling provincialisation of 4993 schools involving about 13362 teachers at the elementary level, 626 schools will be provincialised involving about 4828 teachers at the secondary level and 30 new colleges involving about 900 teaching and non teaching staff.
“Besides, 768 posts of teachers will be provincialised in the 134 already provincialised colleges as they have recently acquired UGC norms,” he said.
Moreover, in another significant move, principals of colleges will now be authorized to fill up all 665 vacant posts in the next six months.
“The state government would also once and for all address the issue of pay parity, security of tenure and medical reimbursement of 5600 contractual high school teachers, 11000 teachers under state pool and 32000 under SSA,” Sarma said.
The minister further said that Rs 450 crore would be released to the school management committees for distribution of free school uniform among all students from elementary to high school level by April 2020. “Besides, Rs 962 crore will be released for infrastructure development of elementary schools by April,” he said.
Over and above, the education department will introduce of science stream in colleges, establish 100 high schools in tea garden areas and upgrade high schools to higher secondary in the next six months.
“So we can say that about 1 lakh teachers and 60 lakh students would benefit from these measures in the next six months. The state government would spend Rs 3000crore annually for implementing all these measures. Our motto is to establish a student-centric education system in the state and teachers have a significant role to play in this regard,” the minister said.