BHUBANESWAR: State government has recruited 16,009 junior teachers who will be engaged in elementary (primary and upper primary) schools, School and Mass Education minister Nityananda Gond said here on Wednesday.
Orientation programme will be held for the new teachers this week.
The minister had earlier informed the State Assembly that there are 26,522 primary and 14,885 upper primary schools which have 1,35,656 sanctioned teacher posts. In these 41,407 schools, more than 17,000 teacher posts were lying vacant. Appointment of these teachers had earlier been stayed by the Orissa High Court.
The Odisha School Education Programme Authority (OSEPA) had decided to fill up 20,000 junior teacher posts and held a computer-based test last year. It had released a draft merit list of 18, 805 candidates but some aspirants alleged irregularities in the test. Subsequently on January 19, the high court issued a stay on the appointments. However, in June, the HC upheld the OSEPA merit list and asked the government to recruit junior teachers on the basis of the list.
In another development, the empowered committee of the School and Mass Education department has approved filling up of secondary teacher posts in government schools. It has asked the director of secondary education to collect information on vacancies from the district education officers. While the government will take a decision on the number of posts to be taken up for recruitment during a year, the recruitment will be done by the Odisha Staff Selection Commission (OSSC).
Issuing the guidelines for the recruitment process, the department said that selection will be made on the basis of performance of candidates in the competitive examination to be conducted by the OSSC. In case the number of applicants are high, OSSC will shortlist the candidates through any standard procedure.