The new West Bengal Board of Primary Education president Goutam Paul Tuesday assured that none of those who have cleared the Teacher Eligibility Test will be left out and urged the candidates, many of whom are agitating, to have faith in the Board.
The TET in Bengal will henceforth be conducted by the Board annually on a regular basis and the recruitment in primary schools based on it will be done in a fair, transparent and scientific manner twice a year, he said.
Paul, who was speaking to reporters, said "Passing the TET is not tantamount to getting jobs and we will go by the merit-based panel".
Around 200 people who have cleared TET in 2014 and 2016 but are yet to be employed as teachers are on a sit-in before the Gandhi statue in the heart of the city for over 576 days.
"I have great sympathy for them (the agitators). I can assure them that none of them whose names figure in the merit list will be left out. We will go by rules only. We will fill up 11,000 vacancies, notification for which was issued recently. I urge them to have faith in us," he added.
Elaborating on his argument that passing TET does not mean recruitment, he said that not all students who clear the NEET examination are assured of seats in medical college. "For example eight lakh candidates qualify for NEET (Medical) exams but one lakh are enrolled in medical colleges across the country based on their rankings. Not all the eight lakhs can demand that they be accommodated in the medical colleges. The Board is sympathetic to every single TET candidate but we have to go by the law."
Paul said that he is ready for any TET-related query or probe in future if necessary. "We will be following the NCTE question pattern and will upload all details in the net."
Of the 1,24,952 candidates who qualified in the 2016 TET, 1,18,821 registered for recruitment process and 42,627 were empanelled.
In 2020-21 a total 29,665 candidates registered for the recruitment process and 13,685 of them were empanelled in 2020-21. Of them 13,564 have been appointed, he added.
