The school service commission has suggested to the state education department that the written test to select assistant teachers for government-aided secondary and higher secondary schools be held on multiple-choice questions, not on subjective ones, for the sake of transparency in the recruitment process, a commission official said.
The commission has said copies of the OMR sheets containing the MCQs (90 marks) will be handed to the examinees after the selection test.
In its draft rules sent to the SSC earlier, the education department suggested that the candidates be made to take a written test of subjective questions for 300 marks.
The commission has argued that holding the tests on subjective questions may invite legal challenges as teaching job aspirants could move court raising questions about the evaluation or file an application under the right to information act.
“The advantage with MCQs is that once the OMR sheet is handed to the candidates, they can check for themselves how they have fared immediately after the model answers are uploaded. That would reduce unnecessary legal challenges. The model answers are uploaded before the publication of the results,” the official said.
“It would be difficult to give copies of answer scripts to the candidates if they are tested on subjective questions of 300 marks because of the sheer number of pages.”
The SSC official said testing candidates on MCQs using OMR sheets would also lead to faster publication of results.
The SSC had in May 2022 issued a notice announcing that all relevant details regarding the selection process, including the date and method of the written test, would be mentioned in an advertisement to be published later.
An SSC official said the commission was awaiting the department’s consent on the method of the written exam.
The SSC conducts the State Level Selection Test to shortlist teaching job aspirants for secondary and higher secondary schools.
The primary education board conducts the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) to shortlist aspirants for primary and upper primary schools.
An SSC official said: “For over two years we have been discussing a switch to the TET method, which is based on MCQs.”
School recruitments in recent years have been stalled by a barrage of litigations following complaints of irregularities in assessing answer scripts.
“We cannot deny that the credibility of exam-conducting bodies like the SSC and the primary board has been dented in recent years following complaints of irregularities. The best way to restore the credibility is to hold OMR-based assessment and give a copy of the answer scripts to the examinees,” the official said.
The state primary education board gave copies of the TET answer scripts to the candidates who wrote the tests in December 2022 and 2023.
The SSC chairperson declined comment on the issue when contacted by The Telegraph.
Calls and text messages from this newspaper to education minister Bratya Basu failed to elicit any response.