TET notifications likely to be out by May first week

The state government will soon issue notifications for the next Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) for recruitment of primary school teachers. According to the Education department source, the notification

will be issued by the first week of May.

It may be mentioned that the government had recruited around 43,000 candidates as teachers of primary schools in the recently-concluded TET and it is expected that several thousand youth will get job through the fresh TET.

"We are expecting that around 12,000 more people will get job through the upcoming TET. The notification would be issued in

the first week of May," a source said.

State Education minister Partha Chatterjee had earlier indicated that the notification for the new TET would soon be published. But he had not informed about the number of vacancies.

This year, the West Bengal Board of Primary Education will follow the guidelines of the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). The board had a relaxation on NCTE guideline till March, this year. But in the upcoming TET, candidates would require BEd trainings to sit for the examination and a minimum of 50 percent marks in Higher Secondary or equivalent examinations.

The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) made a guideline for every state to recruit primary teachers. But the organisation had given certain relaxations to Bengal during the

recruitment process in last year's TET.

"Necessary training for the examination was also not mandatory for the candidates. It was also not mandatory for the candidates to have 50 percent marks in Higher Secondary examination. But that rule would not exist anymore," the source added.

However, the date of the examination has not been fixed yet. "We'll think about the date of the examination after completion of the online and offline application process," the source added.

It may be recalled that the Calcutta high court had directed the state government to publish the TET results after a prolonged legal battle between the government and other parties over various issues last year. Soon after the High Court direction, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had instructed the state Education department to publish the TET result.