Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) Eight months after large-scale tampering and malpractices were reported in the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) 2019-2020 written by 3.43 lakh aspirant school teachers, the Maharashtra State Council of Examinations (MSCE) disqualified 7,880 candidates who wrote the exam and banned them from writing any future TETs. In the list of proscribed aspirant primary school teachers made public on August 4, are the names of three daughters and son of Abdul Sattar, Maharashtra’s agriculture minister. A mandatory exam under the Right to Education Act, 2009 for graduates aspiring to teach in government schools, TET was introduced in Maharashtra in 2013 when the RTE Act was belatedly implemented statewide. Candidates aspiring to teach in Maharashtra’s 71,426 government-administered and government-aided primaries/elementaries (classes I-VIII), are required to pass TET with a minimum 60 percent average score. In the large and rapidly expanding upwardly mobile urban and periurban middle class of Maharashtra (pop.125 million) — and indeed countrywide — landing a government school teacher’s job is a big deal. Starting salaries of government school teachers prescribed by official Pay Commissions which determine the remuneration of Central government employees (including school teachers) serve as benchmarks for state governments, and are handsome. Especially when compared with teachers’ remuneration in the country’s estimated 400,000 budget private schools (BPS). According to Prof. Geeta Kingdon, chair of education economics and international development at University College, London, in rural hamlets of hinterland India, government school teachers are numbered among wealthiest citizens and enjoy high social status as their monthly salaries could be 30 multiples of BPS teachers remuneration. Moreover, within the country’s six million government school teachers’ community there is little accountability for children’s learning outcomes or their own classroom attendance. The authoritative Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) published by the Pratham Education Foundation reports that learning outcomes of government school children countrywide are declining year-by-year. Moreover, several studies have documented that 25 percent of all government school teachers are absent from classes every day. Little wonder the number of graduates from obscure undergrad colleges signing up for TET is rising every year. In 2018, 1.73 lakh candidates wrote TET, while in 2020, the number of candidates — most of whom are employed in BPS, writing TET — more than doubled to 3.43 lakh. However, given the weak school and undergrad education of the great majority of TET candidates, the exam has always recorded poor pass percentages. In 2018, of the 1.73 lakh candidates in Maharashtra who wrote TET, only 1,679 passed. In TET 2020, of the 3.43 lakh who wrote the exam a mere 16,705 passed. Unsurprisingly, with the mad scramble for government school employment, the education sector has become the happy hunting ground of corrupt officials, agents and coaching school professionals. Moreover with TET going online, officials of software companies have also become embroiled in TET scams and scandals. In November 2020, the Pune police during a raid on the city-based GA Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd, an external contractor which conducts recruitment exams on behalf of…
