Edappadi Palaniswami calls for filling up vacancies in teaching posts in T.N. government schools

AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Monday urged the DMK government to take steps to fill up all the vacancies in the Tamil Nadu’s School Education Department, as the new academic year is set to commence.

AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Monday urged the DMK government to take steps to fill up all the vacancies in the Tamil Nadu’s School Education Department, as the new academic year is set to commence.

In a statement, Mr. Palaniswami charged that over 12,000 teaching posts were vacant in the School Education Department across the State. As there were several lakh qualified candidates available, he urged the DMK government to fill up these vacancies on war-footing.

The former CM cited various teachers associations, which said that headmaster posts were vacant in about 1,000 State-run high and higher secondary schools and several hundred vacancies in middle schools. About 12,000 posts were vacant in primary, middle, high and higher secondary schools across the State, he said, quoting these associations. Mr. Palaniswami further quoted them to say that though there should be a teacher for every 35-40 students, there were about 60 students in every class due to the shortage in teachers. “Teachers associations say that classes cannot be kept under control due to this”.

As there is a shortage of teachers, teachers are not able to give proper attention to each and every student and moreover, over 50,000 students did not appear in the Class 10 and 12 board exams last academic year, Mr. Palaniswami said citing their contentions. He further questioned the status of a committee constituted by the DMK government to look into the huge number of students not appearing for these exams. The large number of vacancies in teaching posts have made parents quite anxious about their children’s studies, he said.

Though some schools had more teachers than required and some of them wanted a transfer, they have reportedly not been transferred as yet, Mr. Palaniswami also pointed out. If requests of those volunteering to be transferred is considered, the vacancies could go down a little, he said.