Patna, July 9: The education department is planning to conduct a Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) to fill up posts of nearly one lakh government school teachers.

The department is yet to fix dates for the same but sources said it is likely to be held by year-end. The department last conducted TET in 2011 and appointed around 1.21 lakh teachers in primary and secondary schools. The department had then announced it would conduct TET every year, but no test has been held since.

On Saturday, the education department convened a meeting of all district programme officers (DPOs) to get details about teachers' vacancies in various districts.

"DPOs from 17 districts submitted a list of teacher vacancies in their districts against total sanctioned posts," education department spokesperson Amit Kumar said. "The department has asked DPOs of the remaining 21 districts to submit the list by Monday."

Sources said the department took the initiative to fill up teachers' posts in government schools after Patna High Court directed it to submit a status report on total sanctioned posts of teachers in schools and vacancies and fill up the same. The court directive came in reply to public interest litigation in this regard.

"Once the department receives a list of total sanctioned posts of teachers and actual vacancies, we'll prepare a status report which will be submitted to the high court," Amit said. The government will conduct TET once it gets to know the total number of teacher vacancies in schools.

Only candidates trained from government or private teacher training colleges will be allowed to sit for TET.