West Bengal Board of Primary Education on Monday evening published on its website the scores obtained by successful TET (Teachers’ Eligibility Test) 2017 candidates, in compliance with a Calcutta High Court directive.
The board will publish the scores of the successful TET 2014 candidates at the earliest, said Goutam Paul, president of the ad hoc committee that runs the board.
Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of Calcutta High Court had on November 3 issued the order on the publication of the scores of the successful TET candidates.
The category-wise score — out of 150 — of each and every candidate has been published with his or her name and roll number.
Over 9,600 candidates qualified the TET 2017 (the notification was issued in 2017 but the exam was held in 2021). As many as 1.25 lakh candidates had qualified the TET 2014, which was held in 2015.
The board has uploaded the marks amid the process of submission of online applications by the successful candidates of TET 2014 and 2017 to take part in the interview, the final hurdle to cross before they are appointed as assistant teachers in government-aided primary schools.
There are 11,000-odd vacant posts in primary schools. The board, which stands accused of irregularities in the appointment of primary teachers, would not publish the marks of the TETqualified candidates before. “If any candidate filed an application under the right to information act, the board would inform him or her the score,” said a board official.
The board would call or send a text message to the successful candidates to inform them that they had qualified for the interview.
“We want to share the marks of the candidates who had written the TET examinations. The scores of the 2017 candidates would be uploaded by Monday night. The scores of the 2014 candidates is going to be uploaded at the earliest,” Paul said at a press conference earlier in the day.
Calcutta High Court had in September ordered the CBI to investigate alleged irregularities in the destruction of OMR answer sheets of TET 2014 candidates.
Several teachers are wondering how the board will upload the scores of the 2014 candidates if the OMR answer sheets have really been destroyed.
A board official said they would upload the scores after retrieving them from the database. An official of the school education department said they were committed to carrying out the recruitment process in a fair way.
“The uploading of the TET scores will ensure transparency. Besides, from now the board will video-record the entire interview process,” he said.
Between 2014 and 2020, the board appointed over 50,000 teachers during the tenure of the previous board president, Manik Bhattacharya, who was arrested last month by the Enforcement Directorate on charges of alleged irregularities in appointments.
The board’s secretary had in mid-June asked the district primary school councils to submit records pertaining to the candidates who were recruited as teachers “as TET-2014 qualified candidates so they can be submitted to the CBI”.
