Delhi Cabinet okays 'permanent' status for 15,000 'guest teachers' at Govt schools

NEW DELHi: The Delhi Cabinet on Wednesday gave the green signal to grant permanency to about 15,000 'guest teachers' and teachers engaged under the 'Sarva Siksha Abhiyan' working at Delhi government schools here. The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

After the meeting, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia outlined the background and salient features of the proposal. He said that a draft legislative proposal has been formulated, which will be placed in the coming Delhi Vidhan Sabha session starting on October 4.

"Approximately 15,000 guest teachers, teaching in schools under the Directorate of Education (DoE) have played a crucial role in some of the flagship programs such as summer camps, Chunauti and Reading Campaign. Delhi Government schools have had excellent results in Class 12, outperforming Delhi's private schools for two years in a row," Sisodia pointed out.

Of the 17,000 guest teachers in government schools, 15,000 will benefit from the move while the remaining 2,000, who did not meet certain "criteria", will continue to work as guest teachers, Sisodia added. He said that guest teachers had been appointed following a procedure and according to a merit list and that 15,000 teachers had passed the Central Teacher Eligibility Test.

All TGT teachers — including guest teachers— have been trained over the past two years on 'differential pedagogy'. Sisodia further noted that Delhi has been first state to notify 'Learning Outcomes' based on the initiatives of NCERT. All our teachers — including guest teachers — are trained in how the classroom teaching-learning processes would change with this approach. Ongoing training for this is being conducted in the form of day-long workshops for teachers every alternative month.

Sisodia said that the Delhi government has invested a lot of money and effort in their training and capacity building over the last two-and-a half years. If the guest teachers who are currently teaching in our schools were to be replaced with completely fresh teachers, the DoE would suffer quite a setback to our education reform process and would need to re-start the process from scratch.

"Apart from the training programs, guest teachers have over the years of their functioning, acquired skills and competencies essential to working in government schools, if DoE loses the services of these guest teachers, DoE schools would lose the benefits of their experience," he said.