Govt reduces TET to grace marks exercise
Manna to aspiring teachers
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, October 07 2011:
The State Government has awarded grace marks to all the candidates who appeared for the Teachers' Eligibility Test, as the number of candidates who scored the minimum marks for qualification fell way below the number of teachers projected to be inducted soon.
Getting through the Teachers' Eligibility Test has been made compulsory for anyone to become a teacher either in the private or Government educational institutions and the first TET was conducted for Manipur on September 16 this year.
The grace marks come on the heels of the ruckus that was created on September 16 amid suspicions of questions being leaked and some candidates not finding their names at their allotted centres, necessitating a retest for some candidates on September 25 .
As per the result of the test announced on September 27, the total number of candidates who cleared the eligibility test for the Primary level was put at 10,220 and 7107 for the Upper Primary.
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Disclosing this to The Sangai Express, a highly reliable source said that the decision to allot a grace mark of 10 on each candidate was taken after it came to light that the number of candidates who had actually touched the qualifying benchmark was far too short of the number of teachers to be actually recruited soon.
The grace mark of 10 was in addition to the 5 marks already allotted for a wrong key in the question paper, said the source.
The decision to allot the grace mark was taken at a high level of the Government, said the source further.
Giving details of the impending need for a massive recruitment drive for teachers, the source said that under the directive of the Centre, all States are to have one Primary school in an area of one square kilometre and one Upper Primary school in every three square kilometres.
During the mapping of the number of schools in Manipur, it was found that the number of schools in the State was far below the National level.
The massive recruitment drive will help to meet the required strength of teachers once the schools come up.
The Union Human Resource Development Ministry has directed the State Government to set up 1,236 primary schools and 478 Upper Primary schools, said the source and added that 158 Primary schools are to be upgraded to Upper Primary.
The projected required number of teachers for the schools set to come up has been pegged at over 2000, said the source and added that notifications for teacher recruitment will be issued soon.
The about 2000 teachers likely to be recruited will include around 1000 in the general category, 600 STs, 40 SCs and 340 OBCs .