Cabinet okays hiring of new teachers, merging small schools
The Cabinet on Monday (October 7) approved a proposal to recruit 2,808 teachers to replace those have to retired to solve the problem of a shortage of teachers in small schools nationwide, Ratchada Thanadirek, deputy government spokesperson said.
The proposal for filling vacant positions in the education sector in the fiscal year of 2019-2020 was proposed by the Office of Civil Service Commission.
However, the Cabinet has set a condition that teachers will only be hired for small schools that have less than 250 students, are located in risky, remote, minority, island, mountainous or border areas.
Meanwhile, schools that have a shortage of teachers but do not meet other conditions will be merged with other schools that are less than 6 kilometres away or have fewer than 250 students. This merger is aimed at boosting the quality of education as per the Office of Basic Education Commission (OBEC)’s plans.
“During the transition period of merging small schools, many small schools have faced a shortage of teachers and have not been able to take in new students,” she said.
The Cabinet approval will allow the filling of 362 positions of education personnel or teachers at 301 schools with 121-249 students each in fiscal 2019 and the filling of 1,921 vacancies in 1,578 schools in fiscal year 2020. While 57 schools with less than 120 students will be filling 62 positions in fiscal year 2019 and filling 463 positions in 443 schools in fiscal year 2020.