‘Covid batch’ trainee teachers struggling to land jobs

Nagpur: More and more trainee teachers, who completed their bachelor of education (BEd) degree during the Covid pandemic years, are finding it tough to land a good paying job. These trainee teachers are providing feedback to their colleges that schools do not keep them as first preference for vacancies.
“First preference for any school is teachers with experience,” said Vandana Benjamin, a senior academic who heads a teacher training college. “...and from freshers, the expectation is that they must have had some training in schools as part of their degree course,” said Benjamin.
The problem is that schools were closed for a major part of the pandemic period. So not everyone was able to get trained in real classroom teaching situation. Initially, even the teacher training colleges were closed owing to lockdown guidelines for educational institutes.
New teachers feel they are “looked down” upon by schools when it comes to hiring. A new recruit told TOI that it is a tough time for fresh BEd pass-outs. “Due to lockdown, many teachers lost their job. Which meant that experienced manpower was anyway available for schools to pick from. So when it came to job interviews, many of my batchmates were not even called even after submitting curriculum vitae,” said the teacher who joined a state board school in June.
Her batchmate, who has been recruited too but will join from September, said, “I will be joining on a salary of just Rs8,000 now. After three months, they will review performance and decide. With such a low salary, it’s almost like a ‘take it or leave it’ offer.”
So if the hiring market was indeed tough, how come these graduates are being taken on board by schools?
The teacher said, “Most of the experienced teachers, who were jobless in 2020 and 2021, have now been absorbed in various schools. Some of them have started their tuition classes and are doing well. And in 2022, with fears of lockdown completely gone, school attendance has returned to normal due to which they require teachers. Thus Covid batch BEd pass-outs are being hired by non-branded schools only and that too at very low salary.”
In Nagpur, when it comes to private unaided schools, it is only the CBSE schools that pay teachers a decent salary. About two or three big brand schools give sixth pay commission level salaries to majority of their staff, but their recruitment standards are very high.
It seems, for a while now, these new graduates will have to do with low salaries till their experience brings them at par.