How do they recruit teachers in Kerala

Today’s Hindu has an advertisement by Kerala public service commission for recruitment of High school teachers. The notification is available online at the commission’s website here

Here is the method of appointment” Recruitment by transfer from among the employees who have completed the 5 years of prescribed service and are working as  Clerk/ Typist/Attender/ Peon in Education Department.”

This is pretty ridiculous. If you join the education department as a Peon and some how attain a degree, you will become a teacher in 5 years.. I have seen this kind of academic degradation in Kerala’s polytechnic colleges.
For example, an 18 year old guy( somehow he passed the high school) is recruited as a watcher or gardener in a polytechnic . He will join a part time ITI ( certificate) course and complete it in 3 to five years depending on his intellectual capacity. The pubic service commission will appoint him a tradesman after some 5 years of glorious service( Here again a notification will come which will select from among peons or gardeners only). Then he will try to get a Diploma in engineering( may be by correspondence or from Tamilnadu). If he gets his Diploma in another five years, he becomes an assistant lecturer( again recruitment among peons/tradesman etc). Then he joins a part time BTech course. Another 5 years he will become a lecturer ( again closed recruitment among assistant lecturers). This process goes on and by the time he retires at the age of 55 , our poor gardener will be heading a teaching deparment. I can point out several such cases.
I am not against people building their careers. But here , a certain percentage of posts are reserved for such people and they need not compete with other outstanding guys outside education department. They become teachers by virtue of being a peon or an attender in a school.
I pity the future generation. May be I will have to teach them multiplication table when they reach our college.
Finally, please take a close look at the notification shown above. The public service commission has floated a short “tender ” for recruitment of teachers. I thought tenders and quotations are for purchase of materials by Government departments . My guess is that the under secretary who drafted the above tender might have been selected from among gardeners peons etc. 😀

4 comments

  1. No wonder our education system is useless. We need people with vision and courage to change the system. We need experts to take decisions instead of student organisations and political parties.

  2. The western world seemed to have a sustained policy of meritocracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy) right from their education system to recruitment (in Government and in private sector). Here in India, meritocracy is followed only in certain sectors of industries (notably IT sector) and that too not by all organisations. Here we rather appoint people based on relationships, political power, wealth and class privilege. And the story above is substantiate this (pleasing political parties, mostly).

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