A full bench of the Madras High Court today held that teachers of private schools cannot claim salary on par with their counterparts in government schools.
The bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and Justice Pushpa Sathyanarayana, in its order also made it clear that the government cannot force the management of a private school to pay salary to its staff on par with the state government-run school teachers.
The matter was referred to the full bench because of split verdicts rendered by two different division benches of the high court.
Referring to various orders of the Supreme Court, the bench said that on more than one occasion the apex court had held that the government cannot regulate the salary structure of unaided institutions as "the same is a matter of contract between the teacher and the school which is outside the domain of public law."
It also said there cannot be any rigidity in respect of salary payable to teachers and further said that any such stipulation would interfere with the overall administrative control by the management and would infringe its rights to establish and administer the educational institutions.
The matter related to an appeal filed by a matriculation school based in Pollachi against the June 9, 2009 order of a single judge who directed the school management to fix the scale of pay to one of its teachers on par with the state government teachers.
