810 Teaching Posts Vacant Across BMC Schools in Mumbai

It has been a while since Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) schools have been facing a shortage of teaching staff. As of now, 810 teachers’ posts are vacant at these schools, as per the data available, reported Mid-day. These posts account for more than 11 per cent of the total requirement. The Marathi-medium schools have as many as 259 vacancies and Mumbai Public schools (MPS) have 222.

Earlier in July, BMC was recruiting teachers on a contract basis. It was just a temporary solution so that students don’t suffer because of the shortage of teachers. As per the portal, Rajesh Kankal, BMC’s education officer stated, “Considering the vacancy of teachers in civic schools and the fact that permanent appointments could take time, we had issued a circular in July allowing headmasters to appoint contract teachers on an hourly-pay basis.”

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The education officer was also quoted as saying that schools with easy access have more teachers than others. Therefore, to provide all with the required number of teaching staff it is decided to keep 20 per cent of positions vacant in every civic school. Gujarati- and Tamil-medium civic schools are among the ones to have surplus teaching staff.

Rajesh Kankal went on to state, “We recently got the approval of the deputy director of the school education department, Mumbai, for the transfer of 550 surplus teachers from secondary schools. If they fill up the vacant posts in civic schools, we won’t have to rely on contract teachers and the problem will be solved.” Furthermore, he said that BMC will be recruiting teachers from NGOs to meet their demands.

Meanwhile, a headmaster of a BMC school asserted that BMC wouldn’t have faced this situation if it hired the 250 good candidates it rejected three years back because they studied at Marathi-medium schools. “What standard upgradation is the BMC talking about when good teachers are not being hired?” added the headmaster.

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