Teacher Administrative Documents

Each section lists the official source, who issued it, and the day somebody here last opened the link. Where a document carries a circular or gazette number, it is printed exactly as it appears on the document.

• "Official index" means the link is a landing page or a search listing many documents, rather than a single one. Those links keep working as new circulars are issued, which a fixed list does not.
• "Listed in the index" means the document was in the Ministry's own circular index on the date shown, with the number and date printed here copied from it. It does not mean somebody has confirmed it is still in force. Open it and check, and where it matters, confirm with your office.
• "In force" is used only where the document is the current published version of something, such as this year's Efficiency Bar modules.
• No circular number appears here unless somebody has read it off the document. An invented number looks exactly like a real one, and a teacher will quote it to an office.
• Provincial instructions can differ from the national position. Where they do, your provincial or zonal office is the authority, not this page and not the national circular.

The service you were appointed to: its grades, the Service Minute that created it, and the regulations behind what you may be asked to do.

Almost every argument about grade, salary point or entitlement is settled by the Service Minute, and most teachers have never opened it. It is worth reading once, slowly, before you need it.

The Minute is amended by gazette. When somebody quotes a rule at you, the useful question is which amendment they are working from.

The annual transfer scheme, applications, appeals, and the separate routes for national and provincial schools.

Transfers run to a calendar and the calendar is unforgiving. The application window, the appeal window and the release date are all fixed, and a day late is a year lost.

National schools and provincial schools are different systems with different authorities. Establish which one you are in before reading anything else: the two sets of instructions look similar and are not interchangeable.

Our own mutual transfer matching is separate from the official scheme and does not replace any part of it.

Grade III to II, Grade II to I, what gates each step, and the salary conversion that follows.

Promotion is gated by years of service, the Efficiency Bar examination and a satisfactory record together. Missing any one of the three stops the whole thing, and the Efficiency Bar is the one people leave too late.

A promotion that is approved still has to be converted onto the right salary step. Check the conversion when it arrives rather than assuming it is right.

Letters of appointment, assumption of duty, absorption and confirmation in post.

Assumption of duty has a deadline, and the date you assume duty is the date your service starts counting. It follows you for thirty years through every increment and into your pension, so keep the paperwork.

Confirmation in post is a separate event from appointment. If nobody has told you that you are confirmed, ask: it is not automatic, and it affects what else you may apply for.

The examinations that gate promotion and increments, their modules, notices and results.

The Efficiency Bar is not optional and not safe to postpone. Failing to pass it by the due date stops your increment, and the stopped money is not repaid when you eventually pass.

There are ten modules across the three examinations and the syllabus for each is published. Teachers who fail have usually never seen the syllabus.

Leave to go abroad, what it does to your service and your pension, and the approvals it needs before you go.

This is the one that goes wrong most often and the one with the least written about it in plain language. Foreign leave must be approved before you travel. Going first and asking afterwards is treated as absence, and it is very hard to undo.

The rules that decide it are in the Establishments Code and in Public Administration circulars rather than only in Ministry of Education documents, because leave applies across the whole public service.

The rules live in Chapter XII of the Establishments Code. The circulars found in the Ministry index cite it directly, so if an officer refers you to "Chapter XII" that is what they mean. Note also that the two circulars dealing squarely with teachers going abroad - 08/2017 and 24/2017 - were listed in Sinhala and Tamil only. If you read neither comfortably, ask your office for the position in writing in English rather than working from a translation somebody sends you.

Get these four answered in writing by your own Department before you go - not by a colleague, and not by somebody who did it last year:

- How long the leave may run, and whether it can be extended from abroad.

- Whether the period counts for increments, for promotion, and for your pension. These three can be answered differently from each other.

- What happens to your post while you are away, and whether it is held.

- Exactly what you must do to resume duty, and by when.

Keep the written approval somewhere you will still find it in five years. A verbal assurance is worth nothing later, when the officer who gave it has been transferred and nobody remembers the conversation.

Salary circulars, allowances, increments and ordinary leave entitlements.

These are public administration matters applying across the public service, so the governing documents usually come from the Ministry of Public Administration rather than from Education.

An increment that fails to arrive is nearly always a paperwork problem rather than a decision. Ask early: the longer it runs, the harder it is to put right.

The master reference for public service conduct, leave, discipline and procedure.

Volumes I and II between them answer most questions beginning "am I allowed to...". It is dry, and it is the authority: where a circular and a rumour disagree, this is what settles it.

The Ministry and Public Administration circular indexes, and how to tell which version is in force.

A circular is only as good as its amendments. Our guide to circular numbering explains how to tell whether the one in your hand is still the operative version.

Where provincial and zonal instructions differ from the national position.

Provincial departments issue their own instructions, and on transfers, leave and appointments those can differ from the national circular in ways that matter to you.

There is no single national index of provincial documents, and this register does not pretend otherwise. Your zonal or provincial office is the source, and asking them directly is faster than searching for an index that does not exist.

Government sites reorganise and documents move. A dead link in a register is a real fault, not a cosmetic one, because somebody needed that document.

• Tell us through the contact page and it will be corrected.
• In the meantime, search the issuing body's own site rather than the open web. A document found on a forum or a messaging group may be the wrong version, and there is no way to tell by looking at it.
• A document with no number and no date should not be relied on whoever sent it to you.