As many as 98 lakh teachers across India may lose their jobs in the next two years with the full implementation of the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) under the Right to Education Act (RTE) and National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) norms, DMK MP P. Wilson said in the Rajya Sabha. He flagged the development as an imminent collapse of classroom stability and a frontal attack on the constitutional right to education.
Participating in a discussion on a private member’s resolution relating to education rights, Wilson said rigid regulatory mechanisms were being permitted to override the actual conditions prevalent in schools. "Article 21A is becoming meaningless," he told the House, arguing that laws framed to protect children’s right to education were now threatening to strip schools of experienced teachers.
TET was introduced in 2011 to standardise teacher quality. However, Wilson drew the attention of the bench to the fact that the present judicial interpretation of the RTE Act and the NCTE Act places even in-service teachers recruited several decades ago under an obligation to pass the test within a limited period or face termination or loss of promotion. "Teachers who entered service long before TET existed are now being told to leave after 15, 20, even 25 years of teaching," he said.
The numbers, Wilson stressed, are alarming—nearly four lakh in Tamil Nadu alone, 98 lakh across the country. "No State, however efficient, can replace lakhs of serving teachers within two years. No education system can withstand such an overnight shock without collapsing," he warned.
Besides loss of livelihood, Wilson placed the question in its constitutional paradox. The Act, he argued, was passed to provide for free and compulsory education to children between six and fourteen years of age. The same Act, then, in its retroactive operation, is set to drain classrooms—especially in government and aided schools catering to the needs of the country's underprivileged.
He also reminded the House that even the NCTE's own notification of August 23, 2010, issued under the RTE framework, had explicitly protected teachers appointed prior to its issuance, clearly stating that new qualification norms would not apply to them. That protection, Wilson argued, was undermined later when amendments were made to the NCTE Act in 2012 and corresponding provisos in the RTE Act created contradictions which courts have since resolved at the cost of the livelihood of teachers.
"What is worse," said Wilson, "is that teachers with less than five years of service remaining are being denied promotion and asked to clear a test that never existed when they were appointed." Such changes in service conditions, he contended, have breached legitimate expectation and/or fairness.
But the crisis is not confined to only teacher welfare. Education experts feel the mass exits at a time when India already faces chronic teacher shortages could severely disrupt schooling. Government data reveals that lakhs of teaching posts remain vacant across the country. Removing experienced teachers en masse could result in pushing the pupil-teacher ratios further, dilute instructional time, and affect rural and first-generation learners disproportionately.
Wilson linked the issue directly to classroom continuity. "After two years, schools will have no experienced teachers," he said, warning that policy obsession with eligibility tests risks ignoring the complex realities of teaching, where experience, community engagement, and institutional memory matter as much as formal certification.
The intervention by the Rajya Sabha also coincided with a broader federal dispute on education funding. Wilson accused the Union government of undermining Article 21A by withholding Rs 3,548.22 crore in Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan funds meant for Tamil Nadu, saying these funds are drawn from the 4% education cess and hence a constitutional obligation, not discretionary grants. Withholding them directly affects 44 lakh students and 2.2 lakh teachers in the State.
While the immediate debate was on expanding the right to education, through early childhood care or even extending free education up to Class 12, Wilson argued that such ambitions ring hollow when the existing constitutional guarantee is being undermined through financial pressure and rigid enforcement of norms.
At the core, the controversy raises a fundamental policy question: is regulatory compliance being accorded primacy over the lived realities of classrooms? Critics argue that quality education cannot be ensured through a single eligibility test alone, especially when it destabilises the teaching workforce. Continuous training, academic support, and gradual reform, they say, are more sustainable than abrupt, retrospective mandates.
As deadlines for TET compliance approach, Wilson urged the Centre to intervene and protect in-service teachers, warning that failure to do so would turn a reform intended to strengthen education into one that irreparably weakens it. "If teachers are pushed out and classrooms fall silent," he said, "the right to education will exist only on paper."
