Evaluate educators for policy intervention, not for showing them the door. Teachers should not suffer due to the dereliction of duty on the part of the executive.
Saleem Yousuf Rather
The public education system hinges on many pillars. It starts with budgetary allocation, followed by infrastructure—classrooms, libraries, and laboratories. From a child’s nutrition to learning outcomes, there is a person whose obligation outshines all others: the teacher. This teacher is not merely someone who enlightens our classrooms and inspires us to live a meaningful life. He is also a lightning rod for many non-teaching ancillary assignments, most of which are not related to his department. These assignments range from being a Booth Level Officer to a Census Enumerator. He is our primary data provider.
The Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2010, envisions quality education for our children. Section 23 of the Act authorised the Union Government to prescribe minimum qualifications for teachers. Subsequently, the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) prescribed passing the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) as one of the essential qualifications for the appointment of teachers in elementary schools. It was regarded as essential to maintain quality standards in school education.
Fast forward to 2025: the executive at the state level failed to perform its constitutional duty to enforce the RTE in letter and spirit. The Supreme Court intervened and passed a judgment in Anjuman Ishaat-e-Taleem Trust v. State of Maharashtra, making TET mandatory not only for new appointments but also for in-service teachers. Thus, TET—which was set as an eligibility criterion under RTE—became a source of stress and anxiety for thousands of in-service teachers across the country.
The judgment triggered significant opposition and protests from teachers’ organisations across India. They contended that applying TET to long-serving teachers amounted to a retrospective alteration of service conditions and could affect the livelihoods of lakhs of educators. State governments filed review petitions in the Supreme Court to roll back its order. On 29 May 2026, the Supreme Court dismissed a batch of 65 petitions challenging its 2025 judgement, only providing the relief of an extended time period for in-service teachers to qualify for TET. The Supreme Court has clearly outlined that the service of teachers cannot come at the cost of the educational future of children.
The case of Jammu and Kashmir
RTE became applicable to Jammu and Kashmir on 31 October 2019. Nonetheless, the executive did not fulfil its responsibility of implementing TET. This is by no means a short period of time. To be fair to the state government and the subsequent government of the Union Territory, there were no major teacher recruitments after 2015. The incumbent government is determined to serve the interests of its teacher community and has already submitted a review petition to the Supreme Court. Prima facie, the judgment is unlikely to come in favour of the government, given the time lag in the implementation of RTE in the state.
The right people are the foundation of every organisation. These people have to be competent, motivated, and aligned with the organisation’s values. These are the premises of hiring employees in any organisation. After hiring, officials are provided with upskilling opportunities to update themselves to serve the growing challenges of the organisation and align with ever-changing circumstances. This fittingly applies to the teaching profession. The evolving landscape of pedagogies, latest interventions in child psychology, and artificial intelligence make it imperative to provide teacher training. Nonetheless, you cannot change the competence of teachers through a Teacher Eligibility Test. You cannot penalise those already selected and become the cause of their trauma.
The way forward
The Supreme Court judgment may appear as judicial overreach in hindsight. The RTE did not envision the retrospective application of TET to in-service teachers. However, in the case of executive malfunction, the judiciary needs to act and intervene. Therefore, if the Supreme Court applied TET retrospectively, it is primarily because of the negligence of successive state governments to implement the RTE. Thus, the executive is to be blamed. Now, only the legislature—in this case, Parliament—can set this mess in order.
Tailpiece
The solution does not lie in rolling back TET. Let us evaluate our educators for specific policy intervention, solely for the purpose of “educating the educators” rather than showing them the door. Teachers should not suffer due to the dereliction of duty on the part of the executive.
The writer teaches at BHSS Zachaldara