Under the Right to Education Act, all teachers should either clear CTET or the state’s Teacher Eligibility Test.Less than a year after the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) was rocked by a paper leak scandal, the Board has re-conducted two crucial teacher recruitment tests at some centres.
The Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) examination for recruitment against vacant posts of postgraduate teachers (PGT) and trained graduate teachers (TGT), held on December 23, 2018, were re-conducted for the test centre in Varanasi on December 30 last year, following complaints of distribution of wrong question papers.
The Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET), first conducted on December 9 last year, had to be redone on December 22 at a centre in Varanasi, as the CBSE lost answer scripts of some candidates. The CTET was for filling vacancies for the posts of teachers at Central Schools.
Under the Right to Education Act, all teachers should either clear CTET or the state’s Teacher Eligibility Test.
According to the notification issued by KVS on December 24 last year, the examination for PGT was re-conducted for the test centre at Gyandeep English School, Lamahi, Varanasi, due to a “mistake committed in distribution of test booklets at this centre.”
Admitting the retest, CBSE spokesperson Rama Sharma said one centre at Varanasi had “erred in the distribution of the test booklet of session-I of KVS Examination held on 23.12.2018”, and candidates had then received the test booklets that were not of their respective subjects.
“The error was detected after a little while. By that time, candidates had written their details in the test booklet and the affected candidates immediately demanded retest, Sharma said. “After examining all facts brought to its notice by the centre superintendent, observers and CBSE officials regarding the error, and taking also into consideration law and order-related feedback from district administration officers present at the centre, both sessions I and II examinations of this particular centre was cancelled.”
The KVS recruitment was for 8,339 posts in 1,100 KVs across the country.
The CBSE also admitted that CTET examination of December 2018, was re-conducted on December 29 at Sunbeam Women College, Varuna, Central Jail Road, Sikraul, Varanasi, for 13 candidates as their OMR sheets were not traceable. “As far as re-conduct of CTE examination of December 2018 is concerned, after due inquiry, the issue was resolved,” Sharma said.
Nearly 17 lakh candidates took the December 9 CTET examination
Sources in CBSE said the two instances indicate the Board has “failed to put its house in order” after the embarrassment over leak of Mathematics and Economics papers during the Board exams last year.
As part of its standard operating procedure, Sharma said, the Board conducts a briefing on any day before the exam to discuss the overall strategy for a fair and smooth examination process. “The Board also insists all its examination centres to essentially hold an internal meeting within the school campus a day before examination day to make all finer planning, keeping in mind the CBSE micro-guidelines, to ensure seamless conduct of examination. Such meetings were conducted for both CTET and KVS exams,” she said.
