CHENNAI: The Madras HC has exempted government school teachers who were appointed before July 29, 2011, from clearing the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) to continue in service. TET was made mandatory for all government school teachers in 2011 in view of the introduction of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.
A bench of Justices R Mahadevan and Mohammed Shaffiq, however, made it clear that such teachers must clear TET to become eligible for promotions. The court passed the order on a batch of appeals moved by teachers appointed before July 29, 2011 (the date from which the exam was made mandatory) challenging a single judge order dated October 26, 2022. The single judge quashed a government notification for promotion of teachers appointed before 2011 to the post of BT Assistant without insisting on clearing TET.
Pointing out that teachers have not been appointed for the last 10 years in spite of being qualified with a pass in TET, the judges said, “On the basis of the above findings and observations made, the state government is directed to conduct TET periodically and make direct recruitment of teachers and promotion from among TET qualified candidates at the earliest.”
This apart, relying on the data available on the website of Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB), the bench said, that between 2012 to 2019, 33.20 lakh had taken part in TET, out of which only 1.31 lakh have cleared the exam resulting in an overall average pass percentage of 3.95.
“Therefore, the consequence of treating the passing of TET as mandatory even to continue in service apart from rendering the provision as being arbitrary, produces results which are absurd/obnoxious in as much as it could result in more than a lakh of teachers being unemployed,” the bench said. It added that the same would also have the ripple effect of affecting the careers of students in as much as it is impossible to find adequate alternate hands to impart education.