Notifications about TET likely today

The state government is likely to issue notifications for the next Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) for recruitment of primary school teachers on Saturday. It was decided earlier that the notification would be issued within the first two weeks of May. According to a state Education department source, the official notification of TET is ready to be issued on Saturday.

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

State Education minister Partha Chatterjee earlier had informed that fresh recruitment would be made in primary schools but he did not inform the number of vacancies while talking to Millennium Post a few weeks ago. "I will not make any premature comment. I have to see the remaining vacancies in schools across the state," the minister had said, adding: "The process of recruitment through TET is very transparent. Unlike recruitment processes during the CPI(M) regime, we have maintained transparency here."

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 guidelines till March, this year. But in the upcoming TET, candidates would require B.Ed training to sit for the examination with a minimum of 50 percent marks in Higher Secondary or equivalent examination.

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 the last TET.

It may be recalled that earlier, 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 will not exist anymore as the government would strictly follow the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) guidelines.

The NCTE guidelines instruct to bring national standards to create a benchmark in the quality of teachers in the recruitment process.