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The country’s technical and vocational education sector is facing a serious shortage of teachers.

Currently, against the total 15,360 sanctioned positions for teachers in the over 200 government technical educational institutions, only 3,916 are working, according to the officials concerned.

It has left 74.5 per cent sanctioned positions remaining vacant.

Officials of the Bangladesh Technical Education Board and Directorate of Technical Education said that the chronic shortage of teachers made implementation of the curriculum challenging. 

Some officials also said that low salary was a major reason for the crisis. 

Academicians observe that while the technical and vocational education demand more focus, the teacher crisis reflects just the opposite scenario, reflecting the government’s ‘lack of commitment’.

Producing skilled workforce essentially needs the country to give fresh impetus to recruit more teachers which needs a strategy to attract and retain skilled teaching staff, they further observe.

According to the technical education directorate, currently there are 15,360 sanctioned positions for teachers—1,679 for cadre and 13,681 for non-cadre—in the government technical educational institutions.

Against these positions, only 3,916 or 25.49 per cent remain fulfilled, leaving the rest of the 11,444 or 74.5 per cent positions remaining vacant.

A breakdown in the vacancies along the cadre and non-cadre positions shows 74.62 per cent and 74.49 per cent to remain vacant respectively.

Officials said that these teachers joined these institutions as junior instructors (tech and non-tech) under the 10th grade.

Those who get promoted to the 9th grade become instructors, while being promoted to the 6th grade they become chief instructors, which is equivalent to assistant professor position. With promotion to the 5th grade, one becomes the principal  or vice-principal at the technical schools and colleges, while with promotion to the 4th grade one becomes the principal at the polytechnic institutes.

The then Awami League-led government undertook an action plan to increase student enrolment in the technical and vocation education to 25 per cent by 2025 and 30 per cent by 2030.

Bangladesh Technical Education Board chairman Md Rakib Ullah told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· on Monday that the enrolment was now around 18 per cent. 

The teacher crisis suddenly deepened in 2016 when the government abruptly doubled the number of seats in the technical educational institutions to increase the enrolment.

Some positions for teaching staff were also created after that, he continued.

‘For implementing curriculum we need teachers,’ he said.

Md Kaykobad, distinguished professor at the BRAC University computer science and engineering department, remarked that increasing the number of students without correspondingly increasing the number of teachers showed the lack of commitment of the authorities.

In Bangladesh, technical education demands more focus than other streams of education to strengthen the economy, he said.

The professor also urged the government to increase allocations for education. 

Some officials of the Bangladesh Technical Education Board blamed the crisis partially on the regular turnover of teachers due to relatively low salaries.

At entry level, under the 10th grade the teacher salary is Tk 16,000, under the 9th grade it is Tk 22,000, under 6th grade Tk 35,500, under 5th grade Tk 43,000 and  under 4th grade Tk 50,000.

Md Ahsan Habib, professor at the Institute of Education and Research of Dhaka University, said that the technical and vocational education required specialised teachers particularly because teachers specialised in one subject cannot teach other subjects.

‘Other organisations, including the private ones pay higher salaries for the teachers of specialised subjects, teachers are often become reluctant to work at the government technical institutions,’ he said.

Shoaib Ahmad Khan, director general of Directorate of Technical Education, said that the government was taking initiative to fulfil the vacant posts.

‘The government will appoint 3,200 junior instructors within this month,’ he said and added that to expedite the process they took approval from the president for appointing them without police verification.

He said that the shortage of teaching staff particularly intensified from the time when some new positions were created and some new technical institutions were also founded without any teacher recruitment. 

Currently the technical education directorate has under it one degree-level technical teacher’s training college, four degree-level engineering colleges, one diploma-level vocational teacher’s training institute, 50 diploma-level polytechnic institutes and 149 certificate-level technical schools and colleges.