Punjab: Education Department to fill over 300 vacancies at DIETs

Vishav Bharti

Chandigarh, January 19

Finally, the Education Department seems to have come out of fad of sending teachers to Singapore for training and started paying heed to own institutes as the state government has advertised over 300 posts for the District Institutes of Education Training (DIETs).

In a notice issued by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), the process to fill 325 posts on a permanent basis began last week.

The notice stated that the Department of School Education, Punjab, wants to deploy teaching and non-teaching staff at the DIETs and the SCERT through separate cadre by permanent post from among teaching/non-teaching staff working in offices/institutes/schools of the Education Department. The selection would be done purely on the basis of merit.

Six posts of principal have been advertised for the DIETs in Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Kapurthala, SBS Nagar, Moga and Tarn Taran districts.

A total of 110 posts of lecturer in psychology, English, maths, science, physics, chemistry, biology, commerce and Punjabi would be filled, besides 129 posts of mentors, 22 assistant mentors, 21 senior assistants and 10 posts of clerks. Last month, The Tribune had highlighted that around 75 per cent posts in the DIETs were lying vacant.

At present, out of 132 sanctioned posts of lecturer, 110 are lying vacant. The government has sent four batches of around 140 principals of the government schools for training at the Principals Academy in Singapore.

The situation was such that in seven of the 22 DIETs, elementary teacher training course has been shut due to lack of staff.

In 2018, buildings of DIETs in Mohali, Barnala, Pathankot, Tarn Taran and Fazilka were completed but the deployment of the required staff was not done. Similarly, ETT courses at DIETs in SBS Nagar and Moga have been discontinued. Due to this, the aspiring teachers have to join private colleges and pay a hefty fee.