Teachers appointed before July 29, 2011 need not clear TET, to continue service: Madras HC

The Madras High Court on June 2 ruled that those appointed as secondary grade teacher or graduate teacher/B.T. Assistant before July 29, 2011 must be allowed to continue in service and receive increments and incentives even if they had not cleared the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET). 

The Madras High Court on June 2 ruled that those appointed as secondary grade teacher or graduate teacher/B.T. Assistant before July 29, 2011 must be allowed to continue in service and receive increments and incentives even if they had not cleared the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET). 

Justices R. Mahadevan and Mohammed Shaffiq, however, made it clear that those teachers must necessarily clear TET for promotional prospects. The judges struck down a 2020 rule prescribing a pass in TET only for direct recruitment to the post of B.T. Assistant and not for getting promoted. 

The judges said TET must be made a mandatory criterion for the post of B.T. Assistant even by promotion from secondary grade teachers and that TET would not be mandatory only for continuance in service without promotional prospects. The verdict was delivered while dealing with a batch of cases. 

While the Director of School Education too had filed a writ appeal against a single judge’s order to not disturb teachers, who had been appointed before 2011 and had not cleared TET, a few individual candidates as well as an association of teachers too had moved the court. All the cases were disposed of together.