As the country’s community schools have been facing a serious crunch of maths and science teachers, the government is preparing to amend the education regulations to ease the recruitment of technical subject teachers.

The Ministry of Education is preparing to amend the laws to ease the mandatory education degree as the qualification of teachers. The regulations require one to have graduated from the education stream to teach in public schools. Hundreds of schools lack teachers of technical subjects as the number of education graduates in the subjects is far less than required.

“The Department of Education has written to the ministry and the regulations will be amended with consent from Teacher Service Commission,” said DoE Director General Lava Deo Awasthi.

After the amendment, the government will be able to recruit teachers from any academic discipline. The department has started collecting data on the shortage of science, mathematics and computer teachers. An estimate shows the number is over 5,000. The problem is serious in the mid- and far-western regions. The government took the measure after most of the students in public schools failed in science and mathematics in the recent SLC exams. “The high failure rate is due to the lack of competent teachers in the technical subjects,” said Awasthi. The DoE is also preparing online materials on the subjects to aid students in the lack of competent teachers.

source: the kathmandu post,24 Sep 2013