State schools teachers recruitment: 1.36L applications received for 21,600 job postings

The recruitment process was initiated on Pavitra, a specially designed portal to ensure transparency, and a total of 1,36,795 have locked in their preferences. This number is expected to increase as the department has extended the application window by one day.

Pointing out that such a massive teacher recruitment was happening after almost a decade, educationist and head of Marathi school management association Sushil Shejule said, “The number shows how so many are looking forward to work as teachers. But a lot of them are going to be disappointed. The government should declare a schedule of teacher appointments to ensure that the maximum number of applicants who qualify get the job, instead of keeping aspirants waiting for so long and then disappointing a large chunk of them.”

A senior official from the department however said, “The government was anyways expecting a huge number of applicants as those eligible to apply for these recruitments numbered over two lakh. The competition will ensure that the best candidates get appointed as teachers.”

According to a circular issued by the Commissionerate of School Education, 2,16,443 candidates appeared for the Teachers Aptitude and Intelligence Test (TAIT) held in February/March 2023. These candidates and those who appeared in the 2022 exam will take part in this recruitment drive.

With a total of 18,373 openings, Marathi medium schools have the highest number of available teachers’ posts in this recruitment drive.

This is followed by 1,850 posts in Urdu medium schools. English medium schools have 931 posts and Hindi medium schools have 410 posts. The remaining five schools have less than 100 posts available for this recruitment, with Tamil, Bengali and Telugu medium schools having only single digit posts open to be filled.