Over 600 teachers challenge hiring process
A teacher takes a class at the government school in FB Area which was retrieved from illegal occupants on the directives of the Sindh Ombudsman following a report published in The Express Tribune. Photo: Express
The candidates, who participated in the recruitment test for BS-14 positions of Primary School Teacher (PST) and Junior Elementary School Teacher (JEST) in February this year, have raised concerns about the Sindh Government’s policy of reducing passing marks to 33 per cent.
More than 600 candidates have collectively filed a petition through their attorney, Advocate Sajjad Chandio, in the Sindh High Court (SHC), requesting that the passing mark threshold be the same for all candidates.
According to the recruitment policy of 2021, the School Education and Literacy Department, on March 19, 2021, designated certain union councils in 31 taluka;s across 13 districts of Sindh as “hard areas.” These union councils are located in the coastal, mountainous, and desert regions of the province.
Over 38,000 candidates applied for these positions, which were open to all districts of the province. Approximately 17,976 candidates took the recruitment test for the JEST posts, while 20,222 candidates applied for the PST posts.
The petitioners argue that their counterparts from the designated “hard areas” received an advantage over them due to the passing percentage criteria being reduced from 50 per cent to 40 per cent. They have accused the Sindh Government and Sukkur IBA University (SIBAU) of allegedly manipulating the results to favor candidates supported by influential individuals.
The petitioners argue that they also scored between 33% to 39%, but because they are not from the designated hard areas, their scores are considered below the minimum threshold.
They further allege that SIBAU included incorrect and out-of-syllabus questions with uncertain answer choices in the test papers for PST and JEST positions.
They contend that SIBAU “intentionally designed the test and inserted wrong questions or added more than one correct answer in the multiple-choice questions to fail aspiring teachers at the behest of political leaders of the ruling political party.” Their attorney has requested the court to order the government to apply the same minimum threshold of 33 per cent to the petitioners. Additionally, the SHC has been asked to instruct SIBAU to provide additional marks to the petitioners as compensation for errors in the questions.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 6th, 2023.