Friday, February 27, 2009

the two different kinds of 50%

The Education ministry has adopted a cut off of 50% for graduate teachers to ensure 'quality' in the education system. Perhaps a right step forward, I don't know.

What perplexes me is the different standards of 50%. Graduates interested to join the teaching cadre could not achieve 50% and therefore, despite the vacancies, the teaching posts were left empty. Through the "light the nation" project, interviews for temporary teachers were conducted. Here too a bench mark of 50% was set. The difference here was that the same graduates who could not achieve 50% in the RCSC exams had percentages as high as 85% in the Ministry of Education ( MoE) interviews. Most of the graduates selected for the temporary teaching posts were graduates who could not achieve 50% in the RCSC exams. Does this mean that there is a different methodology and standard of the MoE conducted interviews? if yes, why offer only temporary posts, the graduates should be offered permanent posts. if no, why is there so much discrepancy in the percentages conducted by two different institutions.

In a time where our country is facing problems of employment generation I think it is questionable why employment by the education ministry is being curtailed. Instead of a drastic approach, I think it would be wiser to send the higher scoring graduates for high schools and the lower scoring students to primary schools. I am sure a lot of people involved in framing this 50% policy had scored less than 50% during their RCSC exams. Do they consider themselves below the required quality?

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