Siliguri, May 6: Aspiring Nepali teachers, who took the recruitment test conducted by the School Service Commission (SSC) are awaiting the results to see whether their demand for providing jobs in tune with the needs of minority-language schools has been taken into consideration.

The All-Bengal Teachers’ Association (ABTA) had submitted a memorandum to the commission in September last year regarding the demand. The teachers’ body was assured that “a possible solution will be worked out within the framework of the constitution of the SSC”.

“We are waiting for the results of this year’s SSC examination which was held in March. If the commission does not take any step in this direction, we will be forced to launch an agitation,” ABTA district secretary Tamal Chandra told The Telegraph.

As part of its demand for a “need-based” panel, the ABTA had proposed that there should not be any “qualifying marks” for candidates empanelled for schools for linguistic minorities, where a language other than Bengali and English was the medium of education. The qualifying marks for all the languages is 40 per cent.

Headmaster of I.B. Thapa Nepali Vidyalaya Manbir Chettri said: “When a candidate has to appear for the SSC exams in English or Bengali after having completed her/his entire education in Nepali, s/he is placed at a disadvantage in the competition. As a result, only a few candidates from the Nepali-medium background can make it to the merit list due to which education in that medium suffers.”

In order to teach in any school, a teacher must have studied the language, which is the medium of instruction at the school, as a subject at least up to matriculation.

“Since few Nepali-medium candidates are empanelled, many posts of teachers, particularly in science, are vacant in the Nepali-medium schools. The problem is getting acute day by day,” Chettri added.