The Jharkhand government has relaxed the upper age limit for teachers’ recruitment by six years from 35 to 41.

State education minister Jagarnath Mahato has cleared for recruitment of nearly lakh primary teachers with age relaxations.

“Based on demands, the department will relax the age limit for the appointment of teachers in primary and middle schools. Recruitment will be done through a test conducted by the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission,” education minister Jagarnath Mahato said.

“We would like the recruitments to happen at the earliest for the qualitative improvement of education at the primary level at a time offline classes are set to resume on the hope that there is no further wave of Covid. There is a dearth of teachers at the primary level and this would be a good opportunity to fill up the vacancies in our state-owned school,” the education minister added.

According to sources in the school education and literacy department, the last Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) was held in Jharkhand in 2016 and about 55,000 candidates were successful.

At the same time, appointments were also done in the year 2015-16 but several successful candidates could not get an opportunity to appear in the single appointment test.

“It is to accommodate such successful TET candidates that the government has decided to relax the upper age limit by six years. It would also give an opportunity for TET passed para teachers to get an opportunity to qualify as a teacher,” said a senior official in the education and literacy department.

The education department will start the recruitment process of teachers by next year.

“The minister is keen to see the recruitment taking place at the earliest. We hope to publish the advertisement for the vacancies and complete the recruitment by March 2022,” said the official.

Significantly, 26,000 posts are vacant for teachers in primary and middle schools of the state. Along with these vacancies, the department also decided to create 71,000 new posts. After getting the approval of this proposal from the education minister, the process of post creation has also been started. In this way, around 1 lakh posts will be appointed. The reservation roster will be cleared at the district level for an appointment.

Sources in Jharkhand Education Project Council (JEPC) said that the recruitment process for the first phase of 26,000 posts would be completed by January 2022 while the second phase of 71,000 teachers would be completed by March-April next year.