TN Education dept agrees to fulfil some of TETO-JAC’s demands
However, the members alleged that many demands are still left unaddressed and have also urged the government to issue a notification confirming the demands are being met.
TETO-JAC members during a recent protest in the city (file photo)
CHENNAI: Agreeing to the long-pending demands of the Tamil Nadu Elementary Teachers Organisations-Joint Action Committee (TETO-JAC), the School Education Department has announced fulfilling a few of the 31 concerns placed by the members.
However, the members alleged that many demands are still left unaddressed and have also urged the government to issue a notification confirming the demands are being met. TETO-JAC in late August announced a State-wide protest on Sept 10 in respective districts and a three-day protest on Sept 29, 30 and October 1 in Chennai. However, as a step to prevent these upcoming protests by the elementary teachers, the department is said to have agreed to few of the demands.
As per the circular issued by the department on Saturday and post the discussion with the higher officials of the education department, as many as 6,000 administrator-cum-instructors have been appointed middle schools in the State. These administrators will be engaged in the data updation works on the Education Management Information Center (EMIS) portal.
This step has been taken by the government as teachers have for many years alleged that data updation works have been consuming classroom teaching time.
Further, the department has announced that results of assessment conducted by the Ennum Ezhuthum need not be done on a daily basis, but can be done once a week. For this purpose, the teachers have been provided with a tab. Subsequently, agreeing to the demands, the department has agreed that the School Management Committee (SMC) meetings do not have to be conducted once a month. Instead it can be conducted as per the needs and demands of teachers and parents.
Additionally, the department has agreed that government school teachers will not be employed as facilitators for various trainings as it consumes teaching time. Instead candidates under teacher training or the Block Resource Teacher Educators (BRTE) will be employed in this work. Also, the government has agreed to revoke cases filed on teachers who had protested in 2016, 2017 and 2019 in the Jacto-Geo agitation across the State.
And, some of the other demands are; resolving the issue of mandatory passing of Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) for promotion and agreeing to act on increasing the salary of private school teachers as per the court order.