The recent centralisation of recruitment for tribal residential schools across the country, which introduced Hindi competency as a mandatory requirement, has resulted in a flood of requests for transfers. The large numbers of staff recruited from the Hindi-speaking States are protesting postings to the Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRS) located in southern States, where the language, food and culture are unfamiliar to them.
Though Central government officials point out that the willingness to be posted anywhere in the country was part of the requirement for those applying for jobs, the bigger worry may be the impact on tribal students being taught by teachers who are unfamiliar with the local language and culture.
Until last year, staff recruitment for the Ministry of Tribal Affairs’ flagship Eklavya schools was done by the State authorities. In the 2023 Budget Session of Parliament, however, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the responsibility was being shifted to the National Education Society for Tribal Students (NESTS), which has now been given the task of staffing 38,000 positions in over 400 Eklavya schools across the country.
Officials said the centralisation of recruitment was meant to address a severe shortage of teachers in the EMRS system, and to standardise recruitment rules across States, which had earlier used varying criteria and applied reservation quotas as per their State legislation.
The examination for this centralised recruitment process — the 2023 EMRS Staff Selection Examination — was entrusted with the National Testing Agency, now beleaguered by several scandals.
The examination was for the first round of 4,000 vacant teaching and non-teaching positions across the Eklavya schools.
In June, NESTS said that 303 principals and 707 junior secretariat assistants had been selected, along with thousands of other teaching and non-teaching positions.
However, given the new requirement of Hindi competency, a large number of selected candidates hail from Hindi-speaking States, many of whom now want transfers from their postings.
NESTS has been forced to post a notification on its website, saying, “At present, no request for change of place of posting is being considered.”
Government sources said that NESTS will soon roll out a transfer policy, which is likely to be modelled on similar policy for the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNV) and Kendriya Vidyalayas (KV).
They added that there was “nothing unusual” about the requirement of basic Hindi language competency as this is mandatory for JNV and KV recruitment as well.
Unlike in KVs, however, where students hail from across the country as they are often family members of Central government employees, most tribal students in Eklavya schools would benefit from teachers who understand their local cultural contexts.
“The issue is that for EMRSs especially, teachers and school staff being hired from within their local communities is the obvious way to go ahead. These communities have very specific contexts under which learning can be made conducive and it would naturally help to have teachers who understand that context,” said Aparna Choudhary, a social worker who runs the Delhi-based Karta Initiative, which has worked with JNVs and EMRSs.