The Tamil Nadu Teachers’ Association has appealed to the State government to remove the upper age limit for recruiting teachers in government and aided institutions. Currently, 40 is the upper age limit for teachers from the general category and 45 for those from reserved categories.
Following a National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) resolution to convert the validity of the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) from seven years into a lifetime certificate, the association said the government should consider scrapping the upper age limit. “The lifetime validity for the TET certificates would be useful only if the upper age limit in recruitment was scrapped. There are at least 80,000 qualified teachers awaiting jobs for years now,” said association president P.K. Ilamaran.
The association, in its appeal, said with the rate of unemployment increasing, scrapping the age limit would help older, qualified teachers in finding jobs.