60 percent teachers go on mass leave to protest against classes on Saturdays

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Teachers on Saturday took leave en masse under the leadership of teachers' unions to protest against the decision to make 25 Saturdays a working day. An unofficial estimate is that about 60 percent of the teachers did not appear yesterday. It also includes members of the ruling party union. In some schools, teachers who sympathized with the movement, considering the difficulties of the children, came to the school and worked without signing the register.

Meanwhile, opposition teachers' union KPSTA will approach the High Court against the government's decision. This is due to the fact that the government's position has not changed in the discussion held with the Minister of Education the other day. KPSTA informed that the petition will be filed online today. According to the Kerala Education Act, schools are not required to function on the sixth working day. According to this academics for 160 days in LP and 200 days in UP is sufficient. KPSTA State President K Abdul Majeed said that when this matter was raised in the discussion, he received a reply from Minister V Sivankutty that he would think about it later.

NTU stated that it hopes that the government would reverse the decision.

Meanwhile, minister Sivankutty said that of the 1.46 lakh teachers, 1.17 teachers were present on Saturday.