MERIT-BASED AND DIGITAL-DRIVEN APPOINTMENTS OF DIVISIONAL DIRECTORS AND PRINCIPALS

The Higher Education Department administers and manages the academic and administrative affairs of the public sector colleges through the offices of the Directorate of Public Instructions, Divisional Directors of Education (Colleges), and Principals. The 09 sanctioned posts of Divisional Directors of Education (Colleges) in Punjab were being managed through assignment of the additional charge of the said posts to other officers with a repetitive approval of the Competent Authority after every 89 days.

Similarly, there were 824 sanctioned posts of principals in the province out of which 413 posts of Principals (Male / Female) in different scales are vacant all over the province. However, officers within each of these colleges have been assigned duties as drawing and disbursing officers (DDOs) to run the routine matters and for the salary of staff and other contingent expenditures.

This department has developed an online portal for processing the application of appropriate candidates for the above-mentioned posts with an improved reliance upon the principles of transparency, fairness, and merit. The new proposed criteria have been built into the online portal, with marks assigned to each factor for the calculation of overall merit digitally. Furthermore, the interview marks have been proposed to be reduced from 20 to10 to reduce the element of administrative discretion by HED.

The Provincial Cabinet approved the eligibility criteria in its meeting held on 09-07-2024.

The Provincial Cabinet also approved Selection Committee for holding the interviews of these candidates.

The department sought applications of the interested candidates  for the Directors from 15-09-2024 to 30-09-2024. The statistics are as follows:

The department also sought applications of the interested candidates for the posts of Principals from 25-09-2024 to 10-10-2024. The statistics for this process are as under: