HYDERABAD: Hailing the High Court verdict on Friday rapping the TSBIE over the appointment of guest faculty to government junior colleges, lectures claim that the quality of education won’t improve until the arrangement is totally done away with. Of the 6,000 ‘lecturer’ positions in 404 government junior colleges, there are only 840 regular ones. In 162 colleges, there is not even one regular lecturer.
The remaining 5,200 vacancies were filled filled with contract and guest lecturers _ the former recruited for three years and the latter on annual basis. There are 3,800 contractual and 1,400 guest lecturers in the government junior colleges.
Now, with no job security for 85 per cent of the staff working in these colleges, the educational standard in these institutions has taken a beating. P Madhusudan Reddy, president of Telangana Government Junior Lecturers’ Association, said, “The High Court has said that contract lecturers cannot be regularised nor can they continue for more than three years.
By the time there develops an understanding between the teacher and the student, it is time for them to leave. Teachers, too, are not interested in working because they know they are temporary. For proper teaching to take place, the tenure should be of at least for or five years or the government should take up permanent recruitment.”
Since 2002 the government has not recruited any regular lecturer and the colleges have been making do with contract lecturers. Despite the High Court’s directive on ensuring that the tenure of contract lecturers does not exceed three-year term, it was in 2014 that lecturers under this category were inducted.
An official of the board admitted that quality of education depended on the strength and permanence of the teaching staff. “Teachers and infrastructure are most important inputs in the education system. That infrastructure in government colleges is poor is well-known. Now, having so many categories of lecturers - regular, contract, guest, part-time guest, and minimum scale - is doing more harm than good,” he said.