Summary
The SSC had in May 2022 announced that it would soon publish an advertisement for the appointment of headmasters/headmistresses in secondary, higher secondary and junior high schools
They have now proposed that the OMR sheets of these exams be preserved for 10 years for reference
The Bengal school service commission (SSC) has proposed to the education department that the filled-in OMR sheets of examinations for appointment of headmasters and headmistress be preserved for 10 years from the date of publication of the merit list.
Last month, the commission had proposed that the OMR sheets of exams to recruit assistant teachers at secondary schools be preserved for five years, despite a recommendation from the state government to store them for 12 years.
An official of the commission on Tuesday said they are opposed to the 12-year proposal because given the number of candidates who appear in the tests to recruit assistant teachers, a large part of the SSC building would be taken over by OMR sheets if they were to be preserved for that many years.
“As for the OMR sheets of the exams to recruit school heads, we have opted for 10 years (as recommended by the government) because much fewer candidates appear for the tests compared with the recruitment tests for assistant teachers,” the official said.
The commission has also proposed that a hard copy of the merit-based panel containing the names and roll numbers of the candidates, including the waitlisted ones, and the marks scored by them “be preserved in the office of the commission for 10 years or till disposal of the court case, if any, filed against the said selection”.
The SSC had in May 2022 announced that it would soon publish an advertisement for the appointment of headmasters/headmistresses in secondary, higher secondary and junior high schools.
“We have sent the proposals (to the state government) and are awaiting a response,” SSC chairman Siddhartha Majumdar told The Telegraph.
Nearly 5 lakh candidates had written a test for teaching posts in secondary schools in 2015.
“Since no recruitment test has been held in between and the teaching job is a mainstay of employment in an industry-staved state like Bengal, the commission is expecting an overwhelming number of candidates to appear in the selection test for assistant teachers at the secondary level. Preserving scripts of these candidates for 12 years would mean occupying a substantial part of the SSC building,” said an official of the commission.
The SSC, he said, is expecting less than a lakh candidates to appear in the test for around 2,500 posts of school heads.
“Preserving the OMR sheets of these candidates for 10 years won’t be a problem,” the official said.
About 25 per cent of the 9,192 secondary and HS schools in Bengal do not have a headmaster or a headmistress.
“That is resulting in a further shortage of teachers as assistant teachers are having to function as teacher-in-charge in those schools,” said an SSC official.
The test for recruitment of school heads was last held in 2017.
A commission official said they took time to draw the steps so they could carry out “a fair recruitment process”, drawing lessons from the fiasco of the previous recruitment tests.
The services of 775 secondary school teachers had in recent times been cancelled because the marks of the candidates recorded on the commission’s server did not correspond to the responses captured on the OMR sheets.
Last updated on 26 Jul 2023
