Teacher Eligibility Test to be conducted on April 29 and 30 after three years
Chennai: After a gap of three years, Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB) is preparing to conduct the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) on April 29 and 30 this year.
Sources in the school education department confirmed that the board had asked them to begin the preparations for conducting the exam on these dates.
It is learnt that the school education department also called for a chief educational officers meeting to discuss the arrangements for the exam as around six to seven lakh candidates expected to appear in it.
When contacted, RB officials said, “We are currently discussing with school education department officials the feasibilities and arrangements for holding the exam during the last week of April. We will soon issue the notification after finalising the dates.”
As per the Right to Education Act, the Teacher Eligibility Test is to be conducted at least once a year. The exam will have two papers- paper 1 for the secondary grade teachers and paper 2 for graduate teachers. Because of the court cases, the TRB could not conduct TET for last three years.
The candidates have to secure a minimum of 60 per cent marks (90 marks out of 150) to clear the TET exam. But the state government had relaxed 5 per cent of marks in the qualifying marks for the students from socially disadvantaged sections.
It also issued guidelines marking weightage marks to recruit the secondary grade and graduate teachers (B.T. assistants) in government schools. Both the relaxation of qualifying marks and awarding the weightage marks was challenged in the courts. After a round of litigations in Madras high court and the Madurai bench, the matter has reached the Supreme Court.
Following the Supreme Court’s verdict favouring the state government’s five percent relaxation of qualifying marks and weightage mark system, the candidates were demanding to conduct the exam as soon as possible.
