Rajasthan government announces 62,000 jobs to teachers

The Ashok Gehlot government announced that it would appoint 62,000 new teachers this year. The government scrapped the Rajasthan Eligibility Examination for Teachers (REET) Level II, while retaining the results of Level 1 conducted in September last year.

The state finance department has given its approval to appoint a total of 5386 Village Development Officers (VDO) which would be permanent appointments under the Panchayati Raj department. The finance department has also granted approval for the 8890 new contractual appointments in the medical and health department.

The REET is the qualifying examination for the appointment of teachers and all those who qualify are eligible for appointments as teachers. The REET Level II examination will now be conducted along with the Level I examination in July this year. The Level I examinations are conducted for the appointment of primary school teachers for classes one to five and Level II for upper primary teachers for classes six to eight.

The state government has decided to conduct the Level II examination following the leakage of the question papers. This examination will now be held along with the Level I examination in July this year. A committee would finalise the dates for the examination. These examinations are the biggest recruitment drive by the state government and this decision by the government has thus fulfilled its commitment as promised in the party’s manifesto. Several lakh youths appear for this examination to enable them to qualify to become teachers at various levels in government-run schools.

In an unprecedented and historic move, the Ashok Gehlot government recently sacked, DP Jaroli the Chairman of the Rajasthan State Board Of Secondary Education (RSBSE) following the, leakage of the teacher’s entrance examination (REET) papers.

Jaroli was sacked because of the leakage of the papers prior to the examination and the selling of the leaked papers for several crores to criminals who sold the papers among the aspirants appearing in the REET examination. The paper got leaked with the active involvement of the education department’s employees in Shiksha Sankul, the headquarters of the state school education department.

Chief Minister Ashok after reviewing the various reports following the arrests of the persons involved in the leakage of the entrance exam papers and also the criminals involved in selling these examination papers decided to sack the Chairman for his failure to maintain the sanctity and secrecy of the examination procedures.

The examination of the REET last year was canceled after the discovery that the question papers were leaked. This caused a lot of hardship to the aspirant teachers who worked hard for preparing for the examination.

Chief Minister Gehlot said that several youths seeking jobs as teachers suffered because of the cancellation of the examination due to the leakage of the question papers. He said the government has taken a very serious view of the failure of the various agencies involved with the examination.

“We are not happy in canceling the examination as it would impact lakhs of unemployed youth, but bugged by the BJP leaders deeds, who politicized the whole issue we are constrained to cancel the examination and hold it afresh.” Said Gehlot.

Gehlot said the format for the recruitment of teachers would undergo changes and it would be made more transparent. He said there will be two examinations for teacher recruitment.He said REET examination will just be an eligibility examination and the successful candidates will have to undergo another examination on subjects that they are planning to teach.A candidate who qualifies for the REET will be able to use his scores for appointments for the next three years and would now not be required to appear again and against for the teacher’s appointment.

Pradesh Congress president Govind Singh Dotasara said the state government in all fairness decided to scrap the examination after the question papers leak surfaced. The state government sacked the Board of Secondary education chairman after the leak and suspended the officials involved in the fraud. This shows the willingness of the government in helping the poor examinees. He said the BJP is trying to make it a political issue and misleading the 30 lakh youths who suffered because of the leakage of the question papers.

Rajasthan Eligibility Examination for Teacher (REET), also known as Rajasthan Teacher Eligibility Test (RTET), is a state-level competitive exam which is conducted by the Board of Secondary Education, Rajasthan (BSER) to certify candidates for employment as teachers in the state.