The education department has asked district school inspectors to report how schools are coping after the Supreme Court terminated nearly 17,000 teaching positions.

“We’re collecting data on the extent of disruption to gauge the full scale of the crisis,” said a school service commission official. “This will help the department apprise the apex court of the magnitude of the crisis and help us request interim measures to address the situation.”

Schools report serious challenges:

• Many classes have been suspended
• The plus-II semester system faces implementation difficulties
• Board exam results (Madhyamik and Higher Secondary) may be delayed since many terminated teachers were assigned to evaluate exam papers

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee said on Thursday that the government is exploring legal options following the Supreme Court ruling that the entire recruitment process following the 2016 exams conducted by the commission was “vitiated”.

In its special leave petition challenging the Calcutta High Court’s decision in May 2024, the state government had told the apex court that cancelling these positions would create a “huge vacuum” in schools and potentially halt the education system.

The terminations affect over 25,753 positions (including teachers and support staff) filled through the 2016 recruitment tests. The situation is particularly severe because:

• No major recruitment has occurred in nine years
• Teachers have continued to retire during this period
• Per a Metro report on July 30, 2022, there were already 13,842 vacant teaching posts in secondary schools and 5,527 in higher secondary schools. The figures were mentioned by the school education department in an affidavit in response to an order by then high court Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, now a BJP MP from Bengal.

The commission had in May 2022 announced that it would soon publish an advertisement for the appointment of assistant teachers in secondary and higher secondary. But the tests could not be conducted as the state government did not give the go-ahead, said an SSC official.

Plans for new recruitment tests have since stalled while the government waited for the resolution of legal challenges to the 2016 hiring process.

“The number of vacancies has therefore further increased since the affidavit of July 2022,” said an SSC official.