TET will not be mandatory for Graduates and Post-graduates to become Teachers, know why?
The Teachers Eligibility Test, widely known as TET will not be mandatory for upcoming recruitment drives for hiring teachers. Know what happened when a PIL is filed against TET as eligibility criteria.
The Gauhati High Court has released a statement on the issue of the Teacher’s Eligibility Test (TET) where there was a petition filed by a group of applicants against the recruitment process of the Department of School Education.
The petition was filed after the department released an advertisement for the recruitment dated 28th December 2022, inviting applications from qualified candidates for filling up 7,776 posts of graduate teachers and 1,503 posts of postgraduate teachers in different provincialized/ Government Secondary and Higher Secondary Schools.
The petitioners complained that only around one-third of the total vacancy is available to apply for recruitment as the department has not held the TET exam since 2019. This makes even aspiring candidates excluded from the selection process initiated by the Department of School Education through four advertisements on 28th December 2022.
Also, the unavailability of TET-qualified candidates would mean that a major portion of the posts advertised would be left vacant and this would adversely affect the availability of teachers in the schools and deprive the children of the right to education.
Thus the petitioners demanded that, to either keep the recruitment process on hold till the department conducts the examination so that they can acquire the required qualification or make the eligibility changes for the participation of candidates in the future recruitment process even if they don’t acquire the TET qualification.
In response to this the Department of School Education and Director of Secondary Education, Assam, filed an affidavit-in-opposition mentioning therein that according to the issue of the advertisement released on 28th December 2022, already applications for 1,559 postgraduate teachers and 3,437 for the post of graduate teachers is received and the recruitment process is in the stage of preparation of merit list.
In the affidavit to the court, the department stated that it has placed a policy before the cabinet for its approval to implement a new rule of deleting the requirement of TET (both High School and Higher Secondary TET) and once the policy is accepted by the State Cabinet, the qualification of TET would no longer be a mandatory requirement. Thus, the petitioners would be able to participate in the future recruitment process despite not having acquired the TET qualification.
Words from Gauhati High Court on TET
After receiving the views of both sides the court has said that “It is also not disputed that in the present round of recruitment, the number of applicants who have been found to be qualified for the post is much less than the posts advertised. Apparently thus, upon the above proposal for amendment of the Recruitment Rules of 2018 and 2020 being approved and incorporated in the Rules, the appellants would have the opportunity to apply for the unfilled posts as and when the same are advertised,”
This clears that now the petitioners would get a chance to apply for the post of teachers (graduate teacher and postgraduate teacher) when such posts are advertised.
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