The appointment eligibility examination for class I-VIII teachers or CTET will be held just once a year instead of the current practice of conducting it twice.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has been conveying it to the HRD Ministry that it is overburdened with the responsibility of conducting multiple exams– including the JEE-Main and the NEET for under-graduate engineering and medical courses respectively.
The Board had recently proposed doing away with the practice of conducting the National Eligibility Test (NET), for recruitment of assistant professors, twice a year.
"When all major competitive exams are conducted once a year, why Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) or NET should be conducted twice? They are massive-scale exercises which require massive resources and in a way reduce seriousness of candidates since the fear of wasting a year isn't there," a senior official told PTI.
Following consultations among officials from the CBSE, the HRD Ministry and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), it has been decided that CTET should be conducted only once, the official added.
At present, the exam is conducted twice every year– February and September– and approximately nine lakh applicants appear for it annually.
It has, however, not been decided yet as to in which month the exam will be conducted now.
"The arrangement of the CBSE conducting NET and CTET is likely to continue till the proposed National Testing Service (NTS) is set up by the government for the conduct of all exams," the official said.
Proposed by the HRD Ministry, the NTS will be set up as an independent body dedicated to conducting entrance tests for higher education.
"The proposal of conducting NET once is in a very nascent stage. No decision has been reached on it yet," he added.