'Teachers working in education department should appear in a testing system every five years' says CM Sindh

KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Friday said that tests should be held for government school teachers every five year and in case of their failure their services as a teacher may be terminated, ARY News reported.

“The teachers working in the education department should appear in a third party testing system after every five years. In case of their failure, they may be separated from teaching process because this is the question of education of our future generations,” he said while presiding over a meeting to review the progress of education and discuss the matter of NTS-passed teachers protesting for their regularsiation.

Karachi: (December 29th, 2017) Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah presides over a meeting regarding education policy, NTS teachers issues and performance of School Education.
Abdul Rasheed Channa
Media Consultant to Chief Minister Sindh
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— CMHouseSindh (@SindhCMHouse) December 29, 2017

The meeting was attended by Education Minister Jam Mehtab Dahar, Chief Secretary Rizwan Memon, Principal Secretary to CM Sohail Rajput, Commissioner Karachi Aijaz Ali Khan, Secretary Law Iftikhar Shahelwani, senior officers of education department and finance department and others.

Read More: Police disperse teachers protest outside Sindh Assembly

The Sindh CM said the government was paying huge salaries to teachers so that the children, particularly of poor families could receive quality education, however day in and day out the teachers were taking to roads for acceptance of their demands, he deplored.

He said that there was lack of efficiency in the system to address all those issues to government employees coming taking to the roads.

Murad said quality education would emerge in public sector when teaching skills and will of teaching would develop among the teaching staff.

“I think, there is lack of one or of the both at somewhere which we have to fix through collective efforts,” he said.

He said that the teaching skills of teachers right from primary to higher secondary level must be improved through professional trainings. There should be a high standard teacher training academy where special training programmes should be designed and launched, he added.

The Sindh CM was told that there were 15,649, including 612 HST, 5288 JST, 9749 PST and NTS pass teachers appointed on a contract period of three years.

Read More: Minister vows action against govt teachers working as journalists

He asked the chief secretary about the issue of regularization of the NTS contract teachers. On this the chief secretary said that they had completed their three years contract and now they wanted to be regularized in service. He read out para 10 of Terms & Conditions of their appointments which says “In case of extension of contract, the appointee shall work in the specified school for the extended period. Selected candidate shall be evaluated through Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). The government can extend the contract of those candidates who successfully qualified the QTS. It will be mandatory for all contract teachers to qualify QTS during their three-year contract period to become eligible for extension. The maximum three attempts are allowed to appear in the QTS.”

The chief minister directed the education minister and the commissioner Karachi told to meet the teachers and discuss all these contract clauses with them and the conditions for their regularisation.

He also directed the chief secretary to personally resolve the time scale issue of teachers.