Plea for earlier counselling for transfers

While colleges in the city are not acutely affected, the ones in suburbs and rural areas feel the difficulty

The counselling for transfers of college teachers is generally held during the month of July, before colleges begin full-fledged classes. But teachers associations have appealed to the Directorate of Collegiate Education that the counselling process be held earlier, before the commencement of the academic year.

Both the students and the colleges ultimately suffer from the migration of faculty members in the middle of the year, says K.G. Palani, general secretary, The Tamil Nadu Government College Teachers' Association (TNGCTA).

Ideally, the transfers should happen before the commencement of the academic year as there would be adequate time for teachers to settle down, says M. Kalaichelvi, principal, Bharathi Women's College.

Notification not received

But this year, the notification for the norms of counselling given in the month of March has not been received by colleges. The counselling is organised only for teachers seeking transfers.

The convention of conducting counselling every year in the month of July would be followed this year too, said an official at the Directorate of Collegiate Education.

While colleges in the city are not acutely affected, the ones in suburbs feel the difficulty. Since the transfers are done purely based on the need and demand of faculty, very few teachers are willing to take up a position rural and suburban areas. As a result vacancies are created in the colleges in rural and suburban areas.

The Sri Subramaniya Swamy Government Arts College Thiruvallur, for instance had a 75 per cent faculty positions vacant for the entire semester last year, until the teacher recruitment tool place. The vacancies may again open after the transfer counselling this year, says a faculty member of the college.

The vacancy position should be uniformly distributed to all the colleges, says Mr. Palani.

“But it generally does not affect colleges in the city since teachers make arrangements to move to the college where vacancy is available well in advance. And they move in a gap of two or three days,” says M. Kalaichelvi, Principal, Bharathi Women's College.

Need for transparency

The counselling for transfers of teachers through a single-window system where the interested teachers apply for a transfer based on the list of vacancies available. “This list of vacancies should be transparent and put up on the website well in advance for teachers to know in which college and department vacancies are available,” says S. Tamil Mani, General Secretary, Tamil Nadu Government College Teachers' Association (TNGCTA).