Higher secondary junior English teachers who are continuing in supernumerary posts till Friday have been exempted from Plus One and Plus Two examinations centralised valuation duty that gets under way on April 3. A circular from the Board of Higher Secondary Examinations Secretary to this effect on Wednesday directs that 66 teachers whose posts have not been retained beyond Friday need not participate in answer script valuation. The direction comes close on the heels of transfer order of the 66 teachers to schools where the posts have lapsed. Of them, 56 teachers have been working for the past year-and-a-half after securing appointment through the Kerala Public Service Commission. A total of 110 supernumerary posts of junior English teachers were created by the government. Appointments to 47 of these were to be made from a Higher Secondary School Teachers (junior) rank list that expired in 2016 and was later extended on the basis of a Supreme Court order. However, only 10 of teachers joined service and were appointed to schools where the posts have lapsed. Along with the 56 teachers, these 10 teachers too will be left without a job after Friday. After staff fixation, only in 87 schools were junior English teachers found to have the requisite workload of seven to 14 periods. As per the transfer orders, teachers with adequate seniority already posted in the schools with adequate workload will be retained, while those working in the supernumerary posts but having seniority would also be posted to these schools. Teachers who used to work in those 87 schools will instead be posted to schools where the posts have lapsed, while junior teachers working in the supernumerary posts in such schools will continue there. As some of the teachers were transferred to districts away from where they were currently on exam duty, there was a fair bit of panic and confusion initially; many wondered how they would reach far-off districts on Friday after completing their exam duty on Thursday. However, directions had now been given by the department to relieve them from schools where they were on exam duty so that they could head to their parent schools and be relieved from there in order to join the school to which they had been transferred - only for two days. Teachers say that as they will no longer be in service after Friday, they will suffer service break and will lose out on salary and other benefits till they could get regular appointments. They had met senior department officials and been assured that the next Cabinet meeting will take a decision on their demand for continuing in service while rectifying the problem of service break. This had raised their hopes of a positive resolution to the issue.
