A Cabinet meeting on Wednesday will discuss the issue of raising the minimum age of admission to Class I in the State to six years.
This follows directions by the Union government to all States and Union Territories to fix the minimum age of admission to Class I as six years in line with the National Education Policy (NEP). At present, the minimum age for admission to Class I in the State is five years.
Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty, at a press meet on Tuesday, said the situation in Kerala was very different from that in other States. Here, the dropout rate was very low. Moreover, all children in the school-going age were attending school in the State. In other States, the dropout rate was quite high. As per the Union government, nearly 8 crore children in the school-going age were not attending school. The average schooling period came to 6.7 years. In Kerala, this was more than 11 years.
The State could implement national policies only after taking into account the situation in the State. Kerala had apprehensions about the centralisation envisaged in the NEP. All these would be taken into account and a decision taken after the matter was discussed with the Chief Minister in the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, he said.
On the demand for extending supernumerary posts of junior English higher secondary teachers and ensuring their job security, Mr. Sivankutty said the government was considering the matter favourably. A case regarding this was pending before the court, and a decision was awaited.
The government on Friday issued the final seniority list of teachers working in HSST junior English posts. There are 156 teachers on the list. As junior teachers only in 87 schools have been found to have a workload of seven to 14 periods, 69 teachers were in danger of being let go by the State government at the end of the month. Of them, 59 were those who had received appointment through the Kerala Public Service Commission (KPSC) and had been working for the past year-and-a-half, said the teachers.
The remaining 10 were among the 47 teachers from a Higher Secondary School Teachers (junior) rank list that expired in 2016 and was later extended and who had entered service recently.
On the issue of reservation for the differently abled in aided teacher appointments, Mr. Sivankutty said the government was keen to find a solution to the problem before schools reopened. It had recently issued an order containing guidelines for temporary approval of aided school appointments. There had been no complaints regarding that till now.
However, if there were any complaint or there was need for any clarifications, these should be addressed to the General Education Principal Secretary before April 1. On their basis, an additional order containing more clarifications could be issued, said the Minister.
