LAHORE - The higher education wing of the Punjab education department has decided to recruit another 1,000 college teachers to bridge the gap between the student/teacher ratio to an ideal calculation. This was stated by Ahad Khan Cheema, Secretary Higher Education Punjab, while talking to this correspondent on Tuesday. He said already the process of recruitment of 2,000 college teachers including professors, associate professors and assistant professors in BS 20, BS 19 and BS 18 respectively was in final stages. Of these 920 posts were of assistant professors and the remaining ones of associate professors and professors who were being directly recruited on the posts through Public Service Commission. Never before these posts were filled directly thus opening opportunities to the eligible persons to get these senior slots of teachers by competition. In the past these posts were occupied by promotions through departmental promotion committee but mainly the posts remained vacant due to slow process. The professors recruitment will overcome the shortage of senior teachers who were badly needed for administrative as well as teaching posts at graduate and postgraduate levels. The new posts of 1,000 teachers entirely included lecturers in BS 17. The Punjab Public Service Commission will recruit the lecturers in all compulsory and elective subjects being taught in colleges. Thus the total number of college teachers in all categories will rise to 3,000. The process of recruitment will be completed before the start of next academic session from September 2010. Ahad Khan Cheema said the dream of quality college education could not be fulfilled until the shortage of teachers was removed. He said after posting of the required number of college teachers, vigorous monitoring and evaluation campaign would be launched to check the classes according to the time tables. The feed back of students would also be taken into account to evaluate the quality of classroom instructions. Ahad Cheema said quality education was an ambitious plan of the Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif. It would create a revolution in education if materialised according to his vision and all out efforts would be made to achieve this goal.