Ranchi, June 4: Jharkhand will need over 60,000 trained teachers in the next five years when 60 teachers’ training colleges of the state have annual output of 5,500 candidates only.

With local colleges expected to produce less than 30,000 primary and secondary trained teachers in the next five years, the remaining vacancies are feared to be grabbed by outsiders if more teachers’ training colleges are not set up immediately.

Besides, the massive recruitment of teachers will further boost the demand for teachers’ training courses and the acute shortage of seats might result in the repetition of the Jamshedpur Co-operative College incident.

Interestingly, when one school will have to be established in every 1sqkm, the state does not have even adequate number of trained teachers to fill the current vacancies that have already been advertised.

The state government has already advertised to fill 8,000-odd posts of primary schoolteachers and 3,000-odd posts of secondary schoolteachers, while it is in the process to advertise for further 3,000 vacancies in government schools, says human resource development secretary J.B. Tubid.

Tubid said that they would create 60,000 new posts of teachers in the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-12) by converting all employment guarantee centres into primary schools, each having two teachers. Admitting the shortage of BEd colleges, he said: “We are in the process to open more such colleges.”

The demand for BEd courses in the state can be gauged by the fact that over 17,000 candidates apply for 1,000 seats in 10 constituent colleges of Ranchi University alone.