BHUBANESWAR: Final year students of various teacher training institutes in Odisha on Monday urged the state government to provide them with an opportunity to appear in the examination for recruitment of 7,540 regular high school teachers.
They submitted a memorandum to the Director of Secondary Education (DSE) and the secretary of the Odisha Staff Selection Commission (OSSC) in this regard. The state government had recently asked the OSSC to start the recruitment process for 7,540 regular high school teachers and in its advertisement, the commission notified that candidates must have requisite qualifications for the post as on the last date (January 9, 2023) of online submission of application forms.
Final year BEd and BHEd students of 10 teacher training institutes including IGNOU and those affiliated to Ravenshaw and Berhampur universities said they are on the verge of completing their course and the recruitment will be conducted in three phases (preliminary exam, mains and document verification), they will get enough time to produce final certificates by the time they reach the document verification phase.
They urged the government to add a ‘passed/appearing’ option during the application process for recruitment. Citing the example of Odisha Adarsh Vidyalayas, they said the OAV teacher recruitment process allows both appearing and passed BEd and BHEd students to appear in the qualifying tests.
Earlier this year, the Higher Education department had asked all universities, colleges and teacher education institutes to complete the UG/PG final examinations by July 31 and publish the results by August 15. Many institutions have completed their exams but are yet to publish the results.
“This is by far the biggest recruitment drive for regular government school teachers and similar drives may not be held in the near future. Because of the delay in publishing the results, many of us will be deprived of the opportunity to appear for the examination unless the government allows final year students eligible for the recruitment,” said Akash Behera, a student of BEd from Rajdhani college in the city.