The Bengal school service commission published on Wednesday evening the names of candidates who will get teaching jobs at the higher secondary level in government-aided and sponsored schools.
This will be the first round of recruitments by the SSC at the higher secondary level after a decade.
The “merit list” has the names of 18,500 candidates who will be called for counselling for 12,445 vacant posts.
The list contains the names of empanelled as well as waitlisted candidates.
“Of the 18,500 candidates, the number of empanelled candidates is 12,445. The remaining will be waitlisted. If all the empanelled candidates do not turn up for the counselling, those from the waitlist pool will be called,” an SSC official said.
The waitlisted candidates could also receive a call for counselling if fresh vacancies surface during the validity period of the merit list.
The merit list will remain valid up to a year from the date of publication of the list. In this case, one year from January 21, 2026.
A notice that the commission uploaded on its website said: “The merit list for Class level XI-XII in 2nd State Level Selection Test, 2025 (AT), for recruitment of Assistant Teachers in govt-aided/ sponsored schools in West Bengal is hereby published today, i,e, 21.01.26.”
The commission notice said: “The candidates can download the detailed list of panel and waiting list by viewing the commission’s websites.”
The counselling is likely to start next month.
The merit list was drawn up based on the job aspirants’ performance in the written test held on September 14, the interviews, their academic performance (scores at the postgraduate level) and experience.
Experience scores of up to 10 marks were awarded to in-service teachers, many of whose jobs had been terminated by the Supreme Court in April 2025 because of irregularities in the last recruitment drive held in 2016. These sacked individuals wrote the fresh selection test to retain their jobs.
The merit list mentions the break-up of scores in each segment.
“We wanted to maintain transparency in the selection process, drawing lessons from what happened in the previous recruitment drive. This time, we handed the teaching job aspirants carbon copies of the Optical Mark Recorder (OMR) sheets where they bubbled answers. We invited challenges from them against the model answers that had been uploaded, and then the final answer keys, based on which the scripts had been evaluated, were published,” said an SSC official.
On April 3, 2025, the Supreme Court terminated the jobs of 17,209 teachers at the secondary and higher secondary levels on the grounds of a “vitiated” recruitment process.
The court later said those who were “untainted” among the teachers terminated could continue with salaries till the completion of the fresh selection process.
The SSC held tests for the selection of teachers for the secondary level (Classes IX and X) on September 7. The interviews for the secondary-level jobs have yet to
start.
