Teachers’ passing criteria relaxed

Decision taken by cabinet after miserable test results

After a vast majority of candidates failed the teachers’ recruitment exams conducted last month by the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) in Sukkur, the Sindh Cabinet on Wednesday, by approving the policy of hiring teaching and non-teaching staff, decided to decrease passing marks for females and minorities from 55% to 50% and differently-abled persons from 55% to 33%.

Talking about the recruitment of teachers, Murad Ali Shah, during a press conference at the CM House after the latest cabinet meeting, said that the School Education Department had announced 23,510 vacancies for primary school teachers (PST) and 14,039 of junior elementary school teachers (JEST) against which 184,209 candidates appeared for PST and 164,319 for JEST. Of them, 11,549 qualified the test for PST and 1,385 for JEST respectively.

He said that the cabinet discussed the situation and decided to waive the condition of 45 per cent marks, while 50 per cent passing marks were approved for minorities and girls as well as 33 per cent for hard-hit areas and differently-abled persons.

“In this way, vacancies will be filled to run the schools which are facing a dearth of teachers,” he said. Shah continued that the left over candidates, who passed the test under the newly approved criteria, but could not be appointed due to non-availability of vacancies, would be placed on a waiting list for one year.