Flushing education down the loo : Grace marks in TET
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: October 08 2011 -

That education has never featured high on the agenda of the Congress led SPF Government is a given and in a fitting display of this mindset, it has been established that grace marks were awarded to all the candidates to who appeared in the Teachers' Eligibility Test.

This grace mark was awarded on top of the 5 marks allotted to the candidates for a wrong key in the question asked during the eligibility test held on September 16 this year.

The grace mark was ostensibly added because the actual number of candidates who scored the qualifying marks fell way too short of the projected number of teachers that would be required soon to fill up the posts of primary and upper primary school teachers.

This is nothing short of flushing down the very idea of setting down a minimum standard for anyone to become teachers down the toilet. The Teachers' Eligibility Test is perfectly in sycn with the Right to Education Act passed in 2009.

The idea to make the Teachers' Eligibility Test compulsory for every aspiring teacher comes at a time when the level of teaching, especially in Government educational institutions has hit rock bottom, but here in Manipur it is more than evident that the SPF Government is hell bent on derailing this. Why this is so needs no elaborate explanation.

According to the norms laid down by the Centre or the Union Human Resources Development Ministry, a minimum of certain percentage is what all candidates should score to be eligible to become teachers and the unsaid but intrinsic meaning behind this move is the message that a BEd degree is no longer enough to test the calibre of an aspiring teacher.

Education cannot be expected to be static and more so the teaching methodology and in fact this need is felt more urgently in this dotcom age when any information can be had at the click of the mouse.

This is the age when the Encyclopaedia is no longer understood in terms of thick voluminous books, but going to the right address on the net.

The change in teaching aid, the expectations from students, preparing the young minds to meet the challenges of not only the present but also the future, are all clear cut indications that teachers too have to move with the time and this also means identifying and picking out those with the aptitude to teach.

That the Teachers' Eligibility Test was dangerously close on the brink of becoming a joke was amply demonstrated by the ruckus created on September 16 amid charges and counter charges of questions being leaked and names of candidates not found at the centres where they were directed to sit for the test.

It was amid these ugly developments that the Board of Secondary Education, Manipur, had to announce that a retest would be held for some candidates who could not give the examination due to the hotchpotch arrangement. The retest was conducted on September 25.

Now as things have unfolded, the State Government was not satisfied with reducing the conduct of the test to some sort of a joke and has now gone ahead and given grace marks to the candidates on the ground that not enough candidates would be there to fill up the posts when the time for the actual recruitment comes.

Not all those who cleared the eligibility test will become teachers, this is known to all. However this is the first stepping stone towards becoming teachers and if the Government which conducted the test is going to be the entity to reduce this test to a farce then why hold the test in the first place ?

Candidates who could not even achieve the minimum benchmark of not more than 60 pc being primed to teach the youngsters is a dangerous proposition. There are many possibilities that may be looked into this act of the Government.

In the first place they are the least bothered about the state of education here.

Secondly why the compelling need to ensure that the required number of eligible candidates are there now when the time for recruitment comes ? Just so that the Government will have the leverage to play favourites when the time for actual appointment comes ?

That the need to raise this very question has come about should make the answer to it obvious. Awarding grace marks just so someone who just does not have it in him or her to become teachers ?

If this is not a formula to condemn the young students who have just stepped out from the snug comfort of their parents, then what is ?

Forget the TET, rather an eligibility test to decide whether this Government has it in them to conduct the test should be held first