Court case complete; Graduates to be appointed soon for teaching service vacancies
– Age limit revised and examination to be conducted

With the court case that had obstructed the appointment of development officers as teachers being completed, steps will be taken to soon recruit graduates from both government and non-government services into the teaching service, Education Minister Harini Amarasooriya told Parliament.

In that regard, she also informed the House that expeditious steps will be taken to revise the age limit and conduct the examination to recruit graduates into the teaching service.

The Prime Minister said this while responding to a question raised by MP Chandana Suriya Arachchi during the Oral Question Hour in Parliament today (05).

The Prime Minister further informed the House,

“Development officers can be appointed as teachers. In that regard, an interim injunction has been issued suspending the competitive examination for the recruitment of graduates in the government service to the teaching service for the Tamil, Sinhala and English medium teacher vacancies existing in provincial schools in the country.

The court case has been dismissed. In the gazette published in that regard, it has been decided to increase the upper age limit of 40 years to 45 years, valid only for this occasion.

While the High Court case has been concluded, the final judgment of the case currently pending in the Court of Appeal has not yet been given, and it has been impossible to conduct the examination so far. In that regard, in accordance with the order issued by the court, a cabinet paper has been submitted to obtain permission to recruit development officers in schools and development officers in the government service to recruit them in the Sri Lanka Teaching Service. The cabinet approved it on October 26th.

After the decision was appealed again and the matter was reported to the court, the appeal court case was concluded on the 20th of last month. In that regard, as per the judgment given by the High Court, steps have been taken to determine the age limit for the recruitment of graduates in the government service and graduates not in the government service, and to conduct separate examinations to recruit them in the third grade of the teaching service for the existing vacancies.

In that regard, steps will be taken to revise the age limit in the future and conduct examinations to recruit graduates to fill the existing vacancies in the teaching service,” the Prime Minister added.