The school service commission and the state primary education board, two agencies that conducted recruitment tests and appointed teachers and other school staff, have had very different job profiles over the past year. They are busy terminating the appointments they had made.
The SSC and the board have so far sacked over 3,750 people — teachers and non-teaching staff — after it was established that they had obtained their jobs illegally.
The appointment of several thousand teachers at the primary level and a few hundred teachers at the higher secondary level (Class XI-XII) are under the scanner. Calcutta High Court has said it would check whether these teachers were also appointed legally.
In an industry-starved state where recruitment in schools has been a primary source of employment for years, the termination of so many jobs and the prospect of more terminations raises concerns about the employment scenario at large.
The Telegraph tried to collate the numbers for a sense of the scale of the problem
How many teachers have lost their jobs?
- Primary (Classes I-V): 258 teachers. The primary education board has cancelled their appointments in phases as they were said to be based on fake recommendations.
- Secondary (Classes IX-X): 775 teachers. The SSC has cancelled the job recommendations issued to 775 people on the ground that they got their jobs through manipulation of marks.
- Higher secondary (Classes XI-XII): 1
The Cooch Behar district inspector of schools in June terminated the appointment of Ankita Adhikary, daughter of then minister of state for education Paresh Chandra Adhikary, from the post of assistant teacher. Her name was inserted illegally into the waiting list for would-be assistant teachers in political science, superseding others with higher marks.
How many non-teaching staff have lost their jobs?
- Group C: 842
The SSC has terminated the appointments of 842 Group C employees in secondary schools on the ground that they got their jobs through the manipulation of marks. Group C employees prepare files, draw salary bills and do other office jobs.
- Group D: 1,911
The SSC cancelled the job recommendations based on which 1,911 candidates had illegally got Group D jobs in secondary schools.
Non-teaching staff who work in positions like peons and laboratory attendants are Group-D staff.
All these terminations followed the intervention of the courts that in response to petitions asked agencies like the CBI to probe complaints of corruption in school appointments and passed orders based on their reports.
Jobs under scanner
- Primary: Over 50,000
The appointment of 42,000-odd teachers in primary schools could stand cancelled if Calcutta High Court passes an order cancelling an entire panel of candidates who had cracked the 2015 Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) for primary schools and later got recruited in 2016.
Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay on December 6 said he would, “if necessary”, cancel the entire panel.
The appointment of 16,000- odd teachers recruited in primary schools in 2020 could also be in doubt.
March 2, the court ordered the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to jointly investigate why the “confidential work” of the primary board related to the recruitment of teachers was outsourced to a private company in 2020.
Confidential work means allotment of marks for Madhyamik, higher secondary and extracurricular activities, based on which a TET-qualified candidate is recommended for being appointed as a teacher.
If the probe finds irregularities and the court decides to cancel the panel, then the future of around 16,000 teachers who were recruited in 2020, could become uncertain.
- Higher Secondary: 730
A probe report by the CBI submitted before the court says a section of candidates’ marks in the selection test results, recorded on the commission’s server, is not matching the responses captured on the OMR sheets. The commission, from that pool of 907 candidates, had recommended 691 candidates for appointment as teachers. Plus, 39 candidates were given appointments after the expiry of the panel.
A commission official said whenever the court takes up the matter, 730 (691 plus 39) teachers could lose their jobs.
Recruitments on hold
- Upper Primary level (Class VI to VIII): SSC awaits a nod from the court for proceeding with the counselling process to appoint 14,000-odd teachers at the upper primary schools.
The commission recently during the examination of data detected that at least 1000- odd candidates who had written a test in 2015 used whitener while bubbling the options on the OMR sheet. The commission will submit an affidavit before the court next week seeking to know whether it could proceed with counselling for vacant posts, leaving these 1000-odd candidates out of the process.
“We will act in accordance with the court’s orders,” said Siddhartha Majumdar, chairperson of SSC told The Telegraph on Saturday.