SC agrees to hear plea seeking pension, PF, gratuity benefits for private school teachers

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a petition seeking a direction to the Centre to formulate a comprehensive national policy and appropriate statutory framework for ensuring the welfare, social security and post-retirement protection of private school teachers in the country. A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta issued notice to the Centre, all states and Union Territories and others, including the National Council For Teacher Education, seeking their responses on the plea. The bench posted the petition, filed by Kerala-based petitioner Ligimol George, for hearing after four weeks.

The plea, filed through advocate Deepak Prakash, also sought a direction to the Centre to consider establishing a national private school teachers welfare board or other appropriate institutional mechanism for coordinating, implementing and monitoring uniform welfare measures, including pensionary benefits, provident fund and gratuity compliance, and an effective grievance redressal mechanism for private school teachers.

The petitioner said the plea raises an issue of national importance concerning the absence of a comprehensive national framework for welfare, social security and post-retirement protection of teachers serving in recognised private educational institutions across India. The plea referred to the data published by the Ministry of Education under the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+). It said the UDISE+ 2023–24 report records that India has approximately 14.72 lakh schools, over 98 lakh teachers and nearly 24.8 crore students.

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"Significantly, 37,30,047 teachers are employed in recognised private unaided schools alone, constituting a substantial segment of the national teaching workforce," the plea said. It said despite their indispensable contribution in implementing the constitutional mandate under Article 21A, there exists no dedicated national statutory welfare mechanism or comprehensive institutional framework exclusively addressing their welfare and post-retirement social security. "The continuing legislative and policy vacuum has resulted in arbitrary disparities between teachers performing substantially identical educational functions across different states and institutions," it said.

The plea said despite discharging the vital public function of imparting education and contributing to the realisation of the constitutional mandate under Article 21A of the Constitution, these teachers continue to remain "deprived of a comprehensive, uniform and effective statutory welfare framework". "Although education has consistently been recognised as a matter of paramount national importance and forms an integral part of the welfare obligations of the State, there exists no comprehensive central legislation or uniform national policy specifically providing for the long-term welfare, social security and post-retirement protection of private school teachers throughout the country," the plea said.

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It said the existing legal framework remains fragmented, inconsistent and largely dependent upon varying State laws, institutional practices and contractual arrangements, resulting in substantial disparities in service conditions and welfare benefits among similarly situated teachers across different states and educational institutions.

"The absence of a uniform statutory welfare mechanism has also resulted in considerable inequalities in service benefits and social security protections available to private school teachers across different states, institutions and managements," it said.

The plea said the constitutional guarantee under Article 21 cannot be rendered illusory by permitting an essential class of educational professionals to remain without adequate institutional protection after rendering decades of public service. It said the petition does not seek interference with the service administration or management of private educational institutions, nor does it seek adjudication of individual service disputes. "Rather, it seeks formulation of an appropriate national policy and institutional framework to address a long-standing legislative and administrative vacuum concerning the welfare and social security of private school teachers across India, consistent with constitutional principles...," it said.