Students crack JEE, teachers yet to get regular jobs

Education Minister Harjot Bains had recently hailed the achievement of 261 students from government schools, who qualified the prestigious JEE Mains exam this year. Recognising their feat, the minister had called it a ‘testament’ to the quality of education in government schools of Punjab.

At the press meet, Bains had also announced a summer camp in SAS Nagar for free JEE Advance coaching to these students.

Notably, 231 of the total students, who had qualified JEE Mains, were from Meritorious Schools. Established in 2014, the nine Meritorious Schools in the state have been imparting free education to students from economically weaker families, besides offering residential programme. A student is required to score above 80% for getting admission into the schools through a centralised process.

While the schools have now become hotspots of academically bright students, the teachers, who are the backbone of these institutions, have been struggling for the last 10 years to get their services regularised.

Recruited after qualifying the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) and armed with double master’s degree, the teachers were promised regularisation in 2015. Ten years later, they are still holding protests, burning effigies and sitting on dharnas and, at the same time, also ensuring that their students qualify JEE, NEET and other competitive examinations.

“We have been repeatedly promised regularisation and have been left disappointed by successive governments,” shared Roop Lal, a commerce teacher at Meritorious School, Amritsar. Six students from the school are among the 261, who had qualified the JEE exam. “Even after the 10-year wait, we are being told that the ‘process’ of regularisation is underway. Till when the process will continue?” he said.

The Meritorious School, Amritsar, had a staff strength of 42, but several teachers either left or got deputed to other departments. With admissions about to begin for the new academic session, the government will advertise the excellent performance of the students in the JEE Mains exam as its achievement, yet Roop Lal says their demand remains unheard.

Projected as schools that were set up as “elite” and centres of academic excellence, Meritorious Schools have the state-of-the-art infrastructure, with smart classrooms, science labs, technology infused learning and sports infrastructure.

The residential complex offers housing and food facilities to the students. The enrolments have increased every year. In the 2024 session, over 500 students got seats in Class XI and XII in Amritsar, with cut off at 95%. In the last few years, 243 students from the Meritorious Schools in the state had qualified for NEET and last year 119 qualified for JEE. The coaching classes for these exams are held free in offline and online mode. The Meritorious Teachers’ Union, Punjab, had held a protest in February after a Cabinet sub-committee meeting that was to take the matter of regularisation, postponed and delayed the matter.

Sukhjeet Singh, district unit head, Meritorious Teachers’ Union and a teacher at Meritorious School, Amritsar, said the state government had undermined the status of teachers, who are among the most highly qualified professionals, by keeping them in a limbo. “These teachers have mentored students who qualified for NEET and JEE. They are still slogging on meagre salaries and contractual service,” shared Sukhjeet.

Another issue being raised by the meritorious teachers is that the state government is sidelining them for the Schools of Eminence project. While SoEs were based on a similar premise, the Meritorious Schools already had the infrastructure required for imparting quality education at the secondary level.

Punjab