Jharkhand’s primary and upper primary schools lack more than two-thirds of the total number of required teachers, according to the latest data.

The state government which is all set to complete a year has started to review all the departments. During the review meeting convened by Chief Minister Hemant Soren with the Education department, it was revealed that the primary and upper primary schools are heavily under-staffed in terms of teachers, as per Right To Education (RTE) norm.

The Indian Express reported that when compared with the RTE standards, the state needs an additional sanction of 70,000 teachers in around 33,000 schools which have 34 lakh enrolled students.

The review documents have pointed out that the student-pupil ration is ‘substantially inferior’ compared to other states, due to lack of teachers.

‘In both primary and upper primary schools, Jharkhand has 41,406 working teachers against a sanctioned strength of 64,134. There is a large number of vacancies against sanctions. Moreover, as per RTE norms, current sanctions are not adequate to meet the requirement. 70,000 additional teacher sanctions required to meet RTE norms,’ said the documents.

To cater to the students in middle school, the state has 14,099 teachers while there is a vacancy of 16,680 teachers. The sanctioning norms have been termed ‘sub-optimal’.

The two options proposed to restructure elementary cadre were — to recruit contractually and regularise after eight years or second recruit directly at regular cadre.

‘New cadre will allow us to add 30,000 primary and upper primary sanctions at the same cost,’ said an official privy to the matter.

The Chief Minister has instructed the officials to start a government-run CBSE school from 2021 session. Additionally, he said teachers in 35,000 government schools should be trained periodically.

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