The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Total of 3,458 graduates who registered for Bhutan Civil Service Examination (BCSE) will be vying for 589 slots announced by the Royal Civil Service Commission (RCSC) this Sunday.
Overall, the number of graduates registered for the preliminary exam (PE) has dropped by 426 this year, while the overall vacancies in civil service has increased by 95 slots.
However, the situation is different in case of teacher’s vacancy. While the number of B.Ed graduates appearing for BCSE has upped by about 150 candidates, the number of slots is decreased by 25 this year. A total of 551 B.Ed graduates will be appearing for the BCSE this October.
The highest requirement is for the general category with 114 vacancies which is followed by 64 slots for dzongkha, 30 for history and 29 for IT and one slot for the B.Ed special education.
Meanwhile, the vacancy for the subjects like Physics, Math, Biology and Chemistry are few to none. A group of B.Ed graduates lamented over the issue.
One of the graduate said that the situation contradicts the recruitment of general graduates on contract basis to address the teacher shortage. “We’ve been hearing about teacher shortages so far which is why 350 graduates were recruited after training for just two weeks last year” said one of the graduate who requested anonymity.
“It’s a demotivating for the aspiring teachers who spent four years studying their respective courses and it’s even more disappointing to see not even a single vacancy for some subjects,” he added.
The RCSC human resource department said that the slots are not directly decided by the RCSC but are announced after closely studying the requirement with the respective agencies.
The official said the huge requirement for Dzongkha has emerged after the one teacher-one subject policy. As per the Teacher Requirement Exercise (TRE), the official said there are excess of 160 numbers of Biology teachers and 83 excess Chemistry teachers.
The are excess teachers in Physics and Mathematics TOO. “Where there are excess teachers, the Ministry did not keep provision to recruit additional teachers in these subjects on regular service for 2019”, said the Ministry of Education’s, Chief Human Resource Officer, Dendup Tshering.
He said that the ministry carries out TRE on a continuous basis which determines the teacher number, “Wherever possible, the Ministry will keep a provision to recruit the best ones from the pool of trained graduates”.
“It is evident from the slots announced by the RCSC that where there are critical teacher needs, and so more slots are provided. Where there are less or no slots, it indicates that lesser number or no teachers are required” he said.
TRE is carried out using the formula to ascertain teacher requirement in a school based on number of sections per grade, teaching hours per subject and total teaching hours per teacher in a week. Rationalization is also done for schools where formula cannot be applied.
He said the teacher gap is the difference between existing teacher and actual teacher required. “Based on the analysis of TRE, the Ministry determines the number of teachers to be recruited in each subject for the particular year and the slots will not be even for all subjects as number of sections and teaching hours are different for different subjects,” he said.
However, as per the information ascertained by the ministry from the two Colleges of Education, total of 386 B.Ed. candidates graduated in June 2018. “The difference between the total 551 B Ed graduates applying for RCSC and 386 graduates would be B.Ed. graduates recruited on contract service in the previous years who have registered for B.Ed. BCSE 2018 for regular appointment in 2019,” he said.
The human resource division confirmed that the graduates would be recruited on contract basis as per the need.
The ministry hopes that a provision made by RCSC whereby substitute teachers can be recruited on contract basis in place of teachers on study leave, extraordinary leave and maternity leave would also help some graduates to get absorbed.
“The ministry, dzongkhags, thromdes and schools need to work closely to ensure that teachers demand and supply are matched to avoid situation of excess teachers or gap in schools”.
