The government has finally agreed to allow all temporary teachers, who started their service prior to the success of the April uprising-2006, to secure permanent posts by passing out an internal exam.

As per the 36-point deal signed by the Ministry of Education (MoE) with leaders of agitating teacher unions Thursday, the Teacher Service Commission (TSC) will soon conduct an exam exclusively for more than 10,000 temporary teachers.

In a nutshell, they will get to compete to qualify as permanent teachers, while thousands of fresh candidates will be barred from competing with temporary teachers in spite of passing teaching license exams.

Earlier, MoE had agreed to allow only those temporary teachers who started their service before August 5, 2004 to become permanent through internal exams. However, some teacher unions, especially the pro-Maoist ones, had pressed MoE to recognize April 23, 2006 as the new cut-off date for making temporary teachers permanent through internal exams.

“If April 23, 2006 is acknowledged as a new cut-off date, hundreds of new temporary teachers, who are close to the Maoists, can become permanent,” says a teacher union leader. "This is why the pro-Maoist unions were hell bent on forcing MoE into recognizing this new date on the pretext of honoring the April uprising-2006."

Similarly, as per the deal, the provision of age bar will not come into effect when relief quota teachers participate in an exam, which will soon be held by TSC, for securing permanent posts. In addition, TSC will give them extra points as per their years of experience.

As per the deal, all teachers who lost their jobs before or during the Maoist war for political reasons will be reinstated, allowances of headmasters will be hiked and salary scales of teachers working at Early Childhood Development (ECD) centers will be reconsidered.

"As far as the demand of ECD teachers is concerned, an appraisal of their work will be conducted soon," said Dr Rojnath Pandey, assistant spokesperson for MoE. "Their salary scales may be hiked by increasing their work-hours. Currently, they work only three hours a day. If they work longer, their salary scales can obviously go up."

On Thursday, MoE struck the 36-point deal with two separate alliances of teacher unions, Nepal Teacher Union (NTU) and Nepal Educational Republican Forum (NERF).

Dev Gurung, chief whip of the UCPN (Maoist), Laxman Ghimire, chief whip of Nepali Congress (NC) and Bhim Acharya, chief whip of CPN (UML), apart from education department chiefs of their respective parties, also signed the deal as eye-witnesses. They also expressed commitment to help pass the amended education act and regulations in the legislative parliament.

"As chief whips of all major parties have also signed the deal, we are hopeful that the amended education act and regulation will not return from parliament this time around," said Lal Bahadur BC, general secretary of All Nepal Teachers´ Organization (ANTO), one of major constituents of NERF.

The NTU and the NERF, which closed down all public and private schools last Sunday, had threatened to announce another nationwide educational strike if their demands were not met by March 15. The strike has been averted for the time being. "We have decided to not announce another educational strike following the deal."

According to Dr Pandey, the act needs amendment to address the 11-point demand and the regulation needs revision to fulfill the remaining 13 points.

source: republica, 16 March