English teachers at Delhi University colleges fear job losses with the university deciding to drop English as an ability enhancement course (AEC) as it switches to a new curriculum framework.

Over 400 English teachers on Tuesday asked the Delhi University Teachers Association to intervene and ensure the continuation of English as an AEC subject.

Undergraduate DU students do a compulsory AEC course to enhance their language and communication skills, which is expected to help them in their working careers.

Under the existing curriculum, students selected any one language from among English or the 22 scheduled Indian languages for the AEC, which was taught during the first semester and made up 4 of the 148 credits assigned to the entire undergraduate programme.

Now, with the Undergraduate Curriculum Framework (UGCF) of four-year undergraduate courses due to be implemented from the academic year 2022-23, which begins in a couple of months, DU has dropped English from its AEC course. Now the AEC will account for only 2 of the 160 credits assigned to the entire undergraduate programme.

English teachers fear this will reduce their workload by almost a third, and that 100 ad-hoc teachers of English at DU colleges will lose their jobs.

“The colleges have started assessing the workload under the UGCF. The university authorities have not written to the colleges asking them not to displace the existing teachers although the executive council has decided that the teachers would not be displaced,” Abha Dev Habib, physics teacher and member of the Democratic Teachers Front, said.

“We fear the colleges will remove the ad-hoc teachers after they assess the workload reduction.”

Under the University Grants Commission’s rules, the number of teaching posts at colleges depends on the workload.

An assistant professor is supposed to undertake 16 hours of direct classroom teaching a week while a professor or an associate professor undertakes 14 hours of direct teaching.