Govt schools face staff shortage, appoint 50K teachers soon: Anbumani

CHENNAI: PMK president Anbumani Ramadoss pointed to the paucity of teachers in Tamil Nadu's schools and urged the State government to take necessary measures to address the issue.

In his statement, he said that the primary and middle schools under the Directorate of Elementary Education account for 29,418 in which only 69,640 teachers have been recruited. "Even assuming that these schools have single-section classrooms, there are 1,66,851 classes of which there are 97,211 classes understaffed," he added.

Taking out the numbers gap between new admission and teacher retirement, Anbumani averred that while 2.80 lakh students were given admission in primary schools last year thousands of teachers retired. Recruiting 4,500 teachers alone would bridge this gap, he said.

Alleging lack of focus in northern TN districts he said, "Of the 3800 single-teacher schools, most of them are located in Dharmapuri, Vellore, Ranipet, Tirupattur, Cuddalore, Villupuram, Salem, Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri, and Tiruvannamalai districts."

The newly-appointed president of PMK offered the solution of recruiting 50,000 temporary teachers every year to address the issue. "It is important to lay a strong foundation for students in their primary education to improve their academic performance in higher studies", he opined.

He urged the government to recruit the eligible candidates in the upcoming Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) and issue work orders to the 80,000 candidates who have already succeeded in the test.

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