After almost five years, the Teachers Service Commission designed a new curriculum and held the preliminary paper exam for secondary level teachers on Chaitra 15, 2078 BS. The results were revealed on the 20th of Baisakh, 2079 BS.
The fact that 88 percent of examinees failed the Teachers Service Commission's preliminary examination for the vacant secondary level teacher positions is cause for worry. By maintaining the maximum number of vacant posts at 1,552, the commission was able to include 32,097 candidates in the examinations held in 14 different courses. Only 3886 individuals passed the exam. This is merely a 12% result. This data essentially illustrates the type of workforce that the teaching profession is drawing, which is alarming.
However, there also is a possibility that the commission's examination system has its shortcomings. There were also a lot of questions concerning the first paper's question paper and the test. The Teachers' Service Commission's legitimacy was seriously questioned as a result of this. There were even speculations that the service commission and the institutions were in cahoots. But no further investigation was made. Similarly, doubts also emerged when the subjective examination syllabus was scrapped, and the licensing examination syllabus was made identical to the scrapped one.
This is a sobering picture of how shaky the fundamental cornerstone of our educational system is. The results have been so poor that it has become hard to fill teaching posts in several subjects. No one has advanced to the second stage in subjects such as Sanskrit and health education. Even in subjects with a somewhat higher number of passed candidates, it is evident that it is insufficient. Statistics show that the likelihood of selecting the top candidates is higher when the number of qualified competitors is higher in the same proportion.
No industry can be developed until the education sector is strengthened. It's high time that the government allocates the highest amount of budget to education. Teachers' status should be maintained at the highest level, and teachers should be promoted in the same way that civil servants are: from primary to lower secondary and from lower secondary to higher secondary. Furthermore, teachers' service facilities should be superior to all others. Appointments in the educational sector should be competitive based on efficiency and effectiveness, not quotas or party affiliation.
