The primary education board will hold the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) on December 11 to start the process of appointment of teachers for government-aided primary schools.
Goutam Paul, president of the ad hoc committee constituted to run the board, said: “We have decided that TET will be held on December 11. The board will publish the notification before the start of the Puja vacation. The prospective candidates will start registering for writing the tests after Lakshmi Puja (October 9).”
He also said the board would soon start the interview for those who had written TET in 2015 and 2021 but had not yet been recruited, for appointment to over 11,000 posts. A notification on this will be published before the Puja.
“The school education department has given us an updated vacancy position. The posts that could not be filled up from the previous recruitment exercise have been carried forward. The interview process of the teaching aspirants will be video recorded for the sake of transparency,” Paul said.
“Video recording exercising is a must, considering the spate of court cases in recent times,” he later told The Telegraph.
The board announced the dates of the TET hours after education minister Bratya Basu said the education department was close to resolving the tangle over recruitment.
“We have almost resolved the tangle over recruitment. If anyone can resolve the issue, it is the chief minister. We are holding meetings relentlessly regarding recruitment,” Basu said on Monday afternoon in response to questions on what the education department is doing regarding the appointments that have triggered discontent among teaching job aspirants.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had on August 29 told Basu from a public rally to take steps so schoolteachers can be recruited “in accordance with the law”.
“The board is developing a portal where prospective candidates can start registering to write the TET. A separate portal will be prepared for the interview,” said Paul.
An official of the education department said they wanted to complete the recruitment process at the earliest because the exercise took a hit following allegations of irregularities in appointments made so far.
“As the recruitment has come to a standstill, the 9,600-odd candidates who had cracked the primary TET held in January 2021 could not be appointed.... Fresh recruitments in a fair manner is the only way forward,” the official said.
On Thursday, the board had recommended the names of 185 candidates, who had written the TET in 2016, for appointment as teachers. Paul said they were looking forward to holding TET every year.