Assam: Secondary and HS Schools Suffer from Dearth of Teachers

Staff Reporter

Guwahati: At a time when the enrolment of students in government and provincialised schools, as well as the dropout rate in the state have become a major concern, it has come to light that there is a large number of teachers' posts lying vacant, mainly in secondary and higher secondary schools. A total of 11,793 teachers' posts in 4,529 secondary and higher secondary schools are lying vacant at present, which reflects the sorry state of affairs in Assam's schools.

As per data from the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) 2023-24, there are 44,564 schools in the Lower Primary (LP), Upper Primary (UP), Secondary, and Higher Secondary (HS) schools in the state, with an enrolment of 49,98,140 students. The total number of teachers in these schools is 2,15,854. To break this down, there are 1,00,628 teachers in LP schools, 43,017 in UP, 44,547 in secondary, and 27,662 teachers in HS schools.

According to information placed before the Assembly by Education Minister Ranoj Pegu recently, a total of 11,793 teachers' posts in 4,529 secondary and higher secondary are lying vacant at present. In general area districts, there are vacancies in 4368 posts in case of science teachers, 5185 for arts teachers and 1004 for Hindi teachers in secondary schools. For HS schools, the teacher vacancies number 71 in mathematics, 121 in English, and 13 in Hindi.

In 6th schedule districts, there are 317 vacancies in the case of science teachers, 322 for arts teachers, and 246 for Hindi teachers in secondary schools. For HS schools, there are 39 teacher vacancies in mathematics, 49 in English, and 58 in Hindi subjects. In UP schools, 571 posts for science teachers and 526 Hindi teacher posts are lying vacant. Meanwhile, the department of school education has started the process for the appointment of 224 teachers in 59 model schools. To top it all, there is not a single teacher in 3 primary schools in the state, and 2295 schools are being run by a single teacher only.

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