The move will be to ensure students get a good education

Employment: While it is certain that teacher graduates will be recruited on contract, it is still uncertain how many of the 235 B. Ed graduates will be absorbed.

The education ministry and the Royal Civil Service Commission (RCSC) is working together to explore possibilities of employing them on contract, while the labour ministry is trying to find them employment overseas.

At the Meet the Press session yesterday, Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay said RCSC in consultation with all the ministries and autonomous agencies determines how many civil servants need to be recruited into the civil service and the commission’s authority must be respected.

He said it was up to the commission to decide how many teachers need to be recruited in each field.

“Even to recruit B. Ed graduates as contract teachers, we can’t do if there are no openings for teachers,” he said.

On replacing the 285 community-based teachers, whose contracts expired in 2013 but are still continuing with their jobs with the trained B. Ed graduates, Lyonchoen said if a contract teacher has completed and fulfilled the contract and has not been performing well; a more qualified teacher should replace that person.

“If they cannot fulfil the required skill level, then we’ve to seriously consider replacing with new B. Ed graduates,” he said. “This is difficult but it has to be done for the future of our children. To ensure our children get good education.”

Labour minister, Ngeema Sangay Tshempo, also said that the ministry is working with external agencies to recruit the surplus teacher graduates. About five recruitment agencies will be visiting Bhutan to conduct interviews soon.

He, however, said teacher graduates should not stick to their profession while looking for jobs.

The education ministry in January wrote to all the private schools across the country reminding them to consider replacing untrained teachers with trained ones with effect from the 2015 academic session.

Chief Program Officer, Karma Choden, of the private school division said that the decision was reached following surplus of trained teachers in the market.

“Private schools wrote back to us saying they could recruit trained teachers this academic session but would replace the untrained teacher in phases,” she said.

According to records with the education ministry, there are a total of 736 teachers in 33 private schools across the country. Of that only 305 are trained.

While the 18 high schools have 194 trained teachers, middle and lower secondary schools have 62 trained teachers. Of the 156 total teachers in primary schools, 107 of them are untrained.

By Nirmala Pokhrel

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