The State government has decided to consider English as a language subject and sanction teaching posts on the basis of periods in high schools in the State.
Posts of English teachers will be sanctioned the same way as is done for other language subjects as per Kerala Education Rules (KER).
The decision follows a High Court order in this regard. Accordingly, in high schools with five or more English divisions, high school English teachers who have lost their posts (retrenched or protected) following the staff fixation this academic year will be retained.
It has also been decided to revise the staff fixation for this year as per the KER.
It was in 2002 that the KER was amended to specify that English should be taught as a language in government and aided schools. However, English continued to be considered a core subject, and the post of high school English teacher was sanctioned in high schools that had a minimum of five divisions (25 periods). That is, in schools with four English divisions across classes VIII, IX, and IX, there would be no teacher qualified in English language and other teachers would teach the subject.
There were also concerns that creation of English teacher posts would see a commensurate reduction in other subject teacher posts.
The High Court had in August 2021 said that English should not be clubbed with the core subjects where post allocation is done on division basis; it should be treated as a language subject and a cadre of high school English teachers be created.
When the court order was not implemented, the petitioners approached the court again. The court issued a direction to the government in February this year to complete the procedures for making the appointments by August 16. The government sought more time to implement the directions, and this too expired this month. It is in such a situation that the government decided to sanction English teacher posts.
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