Bhubaneswar: Even as Odisha needs 2 lakh school teachers in to meet student-teacher ratio as per Right to Education norms, the state government has started the process to appoint 16,000 teachers by November.
Speaking to the media on Wednesday, School and Mass Education Minister Samir Ranjan Dash said since chief minister Naveen Patnaik accords top priority to school education, all possible steps are being taken to fill up the teacher vacancies across the state.
“The government has started the process to recruit around 16000 teachers and it will be completed by the end of November or before December,” the minister said.
The minister also said the Directorate of Secondary Education (DSE) has conducted document verification of candidates who qualified in the Computer Based Test (CBT).
It may be noted that in its ‘No Teacher, No Class: State of Education Report for India-2021’ released last month, the Uneso had stated that 3,197 schools, both government and private, in Odisha have one teacher each. While 88% of these schools are located in rural areas, the state needs more than two lakh teachers to meet the student-teacher ratio.
The report also said the state has 3,40,477 teachers in its total 68,717 schools. Around 11% of these schools require 28,816 teachers at present.
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