PIONEER EDGE NEWS SERVICE/ Dehradun
Amid looming threat on the jobs of thousands of government school teachers following the Supreme Court order the Prathemik Shikshak Sangh (PSS), the association of primary teachers of Uttarakhand has demanded ahead of the Teachers’ Day that the State government should conduct a Special Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) for serving government primary and junior high school teachers. The association has asked the State government to follow the example of neighbouring Uttar Pradesh in this regard. The PSS has also submitted a memorandum to the chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami in support of their demand.
Primary teachers have also decided to register their protest on the issue by wearing black armbands of the Teachers’ Day.
The president of the PSS, Dharmendra Singh Rawat said that various state governments are taking practical decisions so that the compliance with the SC order is made while protecting the interests of thousands of serving teachers.
He said that a government order should be issued soon to conduct the special TET, replacing the Uttarakhand Teachers Eligibility Test (UTET) proposed to be held on September 29.
Rawat said that on September 2, the Uttar Pradesh Basic Education department issued an order to initiate the process of conducting a special TET for serving primary teachers. Similarly, Andhra Pradesh has also taken action to conduct a special TET for serving teachers.
He said that there are thousands of serving primary and junior high school teachers in Uttarakhand who are coming under the ambit of the SC order and they should receive relief based on their length of service, experience, the prevailing rules at the time of their appointment and their contribution to the education system.
In September last year, a SC bench ordered compulsion of the TET test clearance for all the primary school teachers of the country. The bench also held that those in-service teachers having less than five years of service left will not have compulsion of TET examination clearance. However, for promotion, they should clear the TET, the bench ordered.
More than 17,000 government school teachers are coming under the ambit of SC order. Most of these teachers were appointed prior to 2011 when there was no compulsion to clear the TET examination for the job of a teacher. The TET examination which has been made mandatory to clear by the SC is conducted by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). In the level one examination of TET, questions on languages, child development of pedagogy, mathematics and environmental studies are asked. For qualifying the examination the candidate must score 60 per cent or more marks which makes it very tough to clear.
