AURANGABAD: Many minority-community education institutions have opposed the government’s move to make passing the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (

) mandatory for recruitment as teachers.

The order of August 24 is applicable with retrospective effect. Under these orders, teachers appointed from February 13, 2013 must have qualified the TET. The directive is also applicable for future recruitment of teachers in schools, including those managed by minority community groups.

The government order is based on a judgment of the Bombay High Court of December 12 last year. Minority institutions, however, have been questioning the rationale behind making TET applicable to them.

“TET was introduced in light of the

, 2009. As per the

judgment, minority schools are exempted from this legislation. Therefore, it makes no sense to bring minority schools under the purview of TET,” Khalif Saifuddin, one of the senior leaders of minority institutions, said.

Another leader of the minority institutions, Quazi Ul Haq, said several court orders have come out in the past in favour of minority schools. “While only a single court order has gone against minority schools, several court orders in the past upheld our stand in the matter of TET. It is wrong on the part of the government to come out with a blanket order taking note of a single court order and conveniently neglecting other orders in past,” he said.

Asked why there was so much opposition to the TET, he said, “The TET is not the tool to decide qualities of a good teacher. It is only a tool to test the knowledge of the teacher without any prescribed syllabus. It makes no sense to ask our trusted, serving teachers to go under fresh scrutiny by making them appear for the TET.”

While the exact number of teachers to be affected by this government decision could not be ascertained, the affected teachers could be quite substantial, given the state-wide presence of schools run by minority Muslim, Christian and Jain communities.

Managements of minority schools are considering going to court in this matter.

The Supreme Court excluded us from RTE Act in the larger interest of our community but the state government is openly issuing orders in contempt of the apex court ruling, Haq said.

Over 2.5 lakh candidates appear for the TET every year in Maharashtra, across 600 centres. The Pune-based Maharashtra State Council of Examinations (MSCE) is the authority that conducts the examination. Divisional educational authorities refused to comment on this issue.