CM Stalin urges PM to amend RTE Act

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Tuesday requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to suitably amend RTE Act, 2009, and NCTE Act, 1993, to protect teachers and render them eligible for promotions.

Such a move, he argued, would make the teachers eligible for promotions and enable them to contribute without disrupting the education of the children.

Seeking the Prime Minister’s support on the subject, the Chief Minister urged Modi to instruct the Ministry of Education to take necessary steps to suitably amend Section 23 of the RTE Act, 2009, and Section 12A of the NCTE Act, 1993.

“Such amendments alone can ensure that teachers who were in service as on August 23, 2010, are duly protected, remain eligible for promotions, and continue to contribute without disruption to the education of our children,” Stalin said in a letter to the Prime Minister.

The matter needed to be resolved urgently as it concerned lakhs of teachers across the country, including a substantial number in Tamil Nadu.

He cited a recent judgment of the Supreme Court requiring all in-service teachers who have not passed the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) to acquire such qualification within two years to continue in service, and even teachers with less than five years of service left shall not be eligible for promotions unless they cleared the TET.

The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) initially exempted teachers appointed before August 23, 2010, from new qualification requirements like the TET. However, this subsequent interpretation of the Right to Education Act by the Supreme Court has made TET compulsory even for these existing teachers, superseding the earlier exemption.

“Consequently, these teachers were now obliged to pass the TET within two years or face termination of their employment, leading to significant administrative and personal hardship,” the Chief Minister said in the letter.

Such alteration of service conditions and disruption of their legitimate expectation of promotion after appointment certainly violated their rights, and directly impacted a very large section of teachers who were fully eligible, properly qualified, and duly recruited under the statutory rules in force at the time of their appointment, he contended.

“In Tamil Nadu alone, nearly four lakh teachers fall into this category. These teachers had satisfied all academic and professional qualifications prescribed at the time, and were recruited through valid and rigorous processes, and entered service many years before the introduction of TET in 2011,” Stalin said.

The retrospective application of TET to this group, both for continuation in service and for eligibility for promotions, created a significant disruption of long-settled service rights, an administrative impossibility for the state, and posed a serious risk of destabilising the functioning of the school education system.

The large-scale consequences of retrospective enforcement were evident across the country. Replacing such a vast number of teachers was not feasible for any state, given recruitment cycles, availability of qualified candidates, and service conditions in rural and remote areas.

Further, depriving long-serving teachers of promotional avenues solely on account of a qualification introduced long after their appointment resulted in disproportionate hardship and stagnation, despite decades of service and experience.

Lakhs of teachers across the country will thus be affected due to this interpretation of Section 23 of the RTE Act. The disruption from such an interpretation also has direct implications for the constitutional right to education under Article 21-A, the Chief Minister said.