CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has quashed a clause in the relevant orders of the school education department which allowed recruitment of post graduate (PG) teachers as headmasters of government high schools based on their service as BT assistants (graduate) teachers. The court held that graduates, PGs and headmasters are different service categories.
A division bench of justices R Subramanian and K Govindarajan Thilakavadi recently passed the orders on a batch of petitions in the matter. Holding that the three services are different, the judges explained that a graduate teacher, who was transferred as a PG teacher into the higher secondary education stream, cannot seek recruitment as headmaster of high school by treating them as graduate teachers.
“We find that PG teachers cannot be recruited by transfer to the post of high school headmaster based on their service as BT assistants as they are recruited by transfer to a completely different service,” the court ruled.
Graduate teachers, falling under TN subordinate educational services, have two avenues for promotion - one as PG teachers and another as headmaster of high schools falling under TN school education service, while PG teachers are eligible for promotion as headmasters of higher secondary schools.
“No doubt, an argument can be raised on the ground that people who obtained higher qualifications are being denied the benefit of being promoted to high school headmaster posts, but such argument is only illusory because the pay scale for high school headmasters and PG teachers is the same,” the bench noted.
The matter reached the court when the state government, in 2015, allowed promoted PGs to be appointed to the post of high school headmasters.