‘No TET’: School teachers’ jobs at risk, hundreds in Delhi to rally against mandatory eligibility tests

When he was 22 years old, Sheikh Javed was recruited to a secondary school in a district near Balaji in Andhra Pradesh to teach physical sciences. He is nine years from retirement. At this point, the mandatory Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) has come as a blow.

Like Javed, hundreds of teachers impacted by the Supreme Court order requiring school educators to qualify the TET to retain their jobs travelled from all across the country to Delhi on Thursday to protest. A few metres away from the parliament, at Jantar Mantar, teachers from different states protested, demanding that the TET not be made mandatory for teachers recruited before 2009.

Teacher eligibility tests became mandatory after the introduction of Right To Education Act 2009. However, the SC made its implementation compulsory for in-service teachers to qualify for it.

On Thursday, as they protested in the capital, a few MPs also joined in, expressing solidarity and promising to raise their issue in parliament. CPIM MP John Brittas, V Sivadasan, CPI MP V Selvaraj and CPI (ML) MP Raja Ram Singh participated in the protest along with the teachers.

The protest was led by the School Teachers Federation of India (SFTI); teachers’ associations from states, including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Telangana, Haryana, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, and West Bengal, joined in.

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State TET: ‘Won’t be able to clear’

Javed who has taught for 30 years in the school said, “In TET we have to appear for examinations in all subjects, such as mathematics, social science and language. How can a physical science teacher sit for these exams and compete with the fresh graduates?”

Similarly Anil Kumar, mathematics teacher at a secondary school in Telangana feels it is unjust that a test is being used to undermine their many years of experience.

Kumar told Careers360, “The way the notification was brought up by National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) is completely wrong. Lakhs of teachers are going to be affected by it. How can TET become an eligibility as most teachers already have B.Ed degree.”

Only teachers with under five years of service are exempt from TET.

For states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Telangana, the state governments have extended support and filed petitions in the Supreme Court.

Wearing headbands with “Save Education” and “No TET” written on them, teachers say they will intensify their fight if the government does not agree to their demand.

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Mandatory TET: Promotions stuck

Teachers unions from Punjab say that due to this rule, promotions for 6,500 teachers have been halted.

Surender Kamboj, a teacher of Punjabi and secretariat member of STFI, said that the Punjab government is not supporting the teachers at all.

“Earlier the promotions for 6,500 teachers were cleared. But the government put on stay the promotions due to this TET eligibility,” said Kamboj. Many retired teachers had also turned up at the protest site.

Even in Haryana, where close to 20,000 teachers may be affected by the regulation, school teachers have not found support from the government.

Rajpal Singh, TGT Hindi at a school in Fatehabad district of Haryana, said the rule was extremely unfair.

“Had we been recruited without any exams then it was something. But we also have appeared for the state selection exam, got selected and then appointed,” said Singh who has been teaching for the past 25 years. He has almost 10 years until retirement.

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Not just secondary school, even primary school teachers were at the protest.

Forty-two years old, R Renganayaki from Tamil Nadu, added, “We hope the Supreme Court will understand our demands and rule in our favour. The BJP government at the centre is clearly anti-teachers.” She has been teaching at the primary schools for the last 20 years.

Joint Action Committee to write to President

The teachers association has also formed a Joint Action Committee of Teachers Organisation. The group will be submitting a memorandum to the education minister Dharmendra Pradhan and the President of India.

While the demand for exempting in-service teachers from TET is the major demand, there are others as well.

The teachers demand restoration of the Old Pension scheme, relief for teachers from administrative and non-academic duties, halting of the merger and closure of government schools, filling of vacant teachers posts and minimum wage for all education sector employees.

Interestingly, among their demands is also the rejection of the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhisthan (VBSA) Bill, which is set to merge the three higher education regulatory bodies – UGC, AICTE and NCTE.