The school service commission (SSC) is likely to publish the results of the selection tests (State-Level-Selection-Test) held to shortlist candidates for the appointment of teachers in the first week of November, said the commission’s chairperson.

The commission may upload the final answer keys — based on which the answer scripts will be assessed — towards the end of October.

“We are likely to publish the results in the first week of November,” SSC chairperson Siddhartha Majumdar said on Sunday.

An SSC official said the commission is, at present, examining the challenges put up by candidates against the model answer keys, which the commission had uploaded on its website on September 16 for secondary level (Classes IX and X) and September 20 for higher secondary level (Classes XI and XII).

The commission asked the teaching job aspirants to send their responses or challenges against these model answers, from September 21 to September 25, for both levels.

Selection tests to shortlist candidates for the appointment of teachers at the secondary and higher secondary levels of the government-aided schools were held on September 7 and 14, respectively.

Once the subject experts go through the challenges and make suitable recommendations, if required, the final (frozen) answer keys will be uploaded, said an SSC official.

“We are committed to honouring the December 31 deadline which the Supreme Court has set for us to complete the appointment of teachers,” the official said.

On April 3, the Supreme Court terminated the jobs of 17,206 teachers because they were recruited through a recruitment process held by the commission in 2016, which was found to be “vitiated”.

The court, in a moderated order on April 17, said among the terminated teachers, those who would be found to be “not specifically tainted” by the commission would be allowed to continue till December 31 with salaries and retain their jobs if they cracked fresh selection tests.

The commission was mandated to complete the fresh selection process by December 31.

Accordingly, the commission held recruitment tests on September 7 and September 14 to screen candidates for 25,512 posts for the secondary level and for 12,514 posts for the higher secondary level.

The number of vacant posts exceeded because the SSC was holding selection tests after a gap of nine years.

“We are firm on the appointment of assistant-level teachers in a transparent way. The 2,91,127 candidates who wrote the test for Classes IX and X and 2,29,497 candidates who appeared for the tests for Classes XI and XII had been issued the duplicate copies of the OMR on which they wrote the tests,” said an SSC official.

“After checking the uploaded model answers with the duplicate OMRs, the candidates have sent responses. The experts, who are university-level professors, are examining the challenges before uploading the final answer keys on the board’s website,” he said.

The commission held tests for 47 subjects — secondary and higher-secondary levels put together.

An education department official said the successful candidates screened from the written tests would be called for the interviews.

The merit list of the selected candidates would be drawn based on the performance in the written tests, interviews and academic scores (denoting performance at the Class X and Class XII board examinations and undergraduate and postgraduate examinations).

Education minister Bratya Basu said on September 14 that the commission this year will upload the list of the candidates who will be shortlisted for the interview.

“A detailed breakup of marks of the shortlisted candidates who will be called for interview will be uploaded on the commission’s website,” he said.