HYDERABAD: Though the appointment of teachers through TRT is underway after much delay, this will not have any impact on the teacher crunch in government schools.
With most of the posts for which recruitment is taking place are for Zilla Parishad schools, which are concentrated in rural areas, and a small number for schools in agency areas, while government schools in towns and cities stand to benefit very little from the TRT.
With nearly 30,000 vacancies in government schools, the government sought to recruit only 8,792, of which majority posts 5,415 secondary grade teachers had to be held back because of ongoing court cases.
“Poor recruitment of teachers is driving students away from government to private schools. But the government says there are not enough students and hence schools will be shut down or merged. The government is indirectly encouraging private education,” M Veerachary, general secretary, Government Teacher Association, remarked. It was in 2001 that the government had decided to shuffle teachers of two types of school, a move that evoked a lot of resistance from the teaching community and eventually could not stand legal scrutiny. But the teachers were never transferred back.
“Before TRT counselling process gets over we want repatriation of all such teachers, they need to be brought back to their parent organisations,” said Rama Laxman, a teacher. R Sarvotham Reddy, president of Progressive Recognised Teachers Union, Telangana.
Teachers seek promotion before appointments
After staging protests seeking TRT appointments, govt teachers are now demanding that the promotion of teachers should also be made simultaneously. It was in 2014 that teachers had last been promoted. Now, with TRT appointments are underway for Grade 2 or School Assistant posts, teachers who have been working for the past 10-20 years and are currently in grade 3 are sore that the new recruits would become their seniors. “We have thousands of vacancies, but instead of promoting on the basis of seniority and then recruiting teachers for junior posts, ” M Veerachary, general secretary, GTA said.