Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama says Gujarat government is going to recruit 10,000 teachers

To improve quality of education for the students, the state government is going to recruit around 10,000 teachers in the coming days, Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama said on the floor of the Gujarat Assembly while participating in the discussion on the budgetary demands of the department.

The state government, the education minister said, will recruit 1,300 primary teachers for class 1 to 5, and 385 teachers for schools other than Gujarati medium. Similarly, 2,000 teachers will be recruited for class 6 to 8, and 215 teachers for schools other than Gujarati medium. In all, 3,900 teachers will be recruited in primary schools, Chudasama said.
The education minister said that 7,010 teachers will be recruited in grant-in-aid schools that will include 1,200 principals and 5,710 shikshak sahayaks. Similarly, 927 adhyapak sahayaks will be recruited in colleges for higher education, he added.

Congress MLAs Premsinh Vasava, Gulabsinh Rajput, and Bhaga Barad opposed the education department’s decision to merge schools having fewer number of students in different parts of the state. Vasava said when a school gets merged with another in the distance of 5-6 kilometres, students do not get transport facility like bus. “In such a situation, children will stop going to schools… It will be good if the schools are not merged and the decision is either cancelled or postponed,” Vasava said.

Defending the decision to merge schools, Chudasama said the decision was a part of future planning to ensure that no teacher has to handle two classes.

‘Students in primary schools going down’
Senior Congress MLA from Bhiloda Anil Joshiyara said the number of students in primary schools was going down day by day. In 2015-16, he said, the number was over around 90 lakhs, which has come down to 86.14 lakhs now. The number of girl students in primary schools was 42.07 lakhs in 2015-16, which has come down to 40.48 lakhs, he said. “This means that children are avoiding going to school. It could be for any reason. We worry for the (school) dropout rate. We become happy that dropout rate has gone down to 3.39%. But that is not the case. Children are not coming to study in the schools. And the government should worry about that too,” Joshiyara said.