In a major development, the Supreme Court said Education must be left to educationists. Setting aside an Allahabad High Court’s 2018 verdict which had held that an M. Ed. qualified person could not be appointed as an Assistant Professor for the subject of Education.
The controversy centered around the sole issue of whether an M.Ed. Degree can be treated as an equivalent degree to M.A. (Education) for the purposes of appointment to the post of Assistant Professor as published in March, 2014 by the Uttar Pradesh Higher Education Service Selection Commission (UPHESSC).
The UPHESSC took help of an expert panel of four educationists who opined that for the post of Assistant Professor (Teaching), Faculty of Arts, the degree of M.Ed., as well as, the qualification of M.A. (Education) should be accepted.
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Based on the opinion, the employing authority UPHESSC came out with a corrigendum on July 11, 2016 and allowed candidates having the two degrees to compete for the posts. However, a division Bench of the Allahabad High Court, on May 14, 2018, opined that while M A (Education) is a master’s degree in the subject concerned, M.Ed. is not so, as it is only a training qualification. “The conclusion reached was that an M.Ed. qualified person could not be appointed to the post of Assistant Professor in Education, and consequently the corrigendum dated July 11, 2016 was quashed,” the High Court had held.
