Tamil Nadu scraps weightage marks system

Chennai: In a major policy decision, the state government has scrapped the weightage marks system for recruiting elementary and upper primary teachers in government schools.

According to the government order issued by the school education secretary Pradeep Yadav, henceforth, the TET qualified candidates have to appear for the competitive exam to get an appointment in the government schools.

As per the Right to Education Act, the Teacher Eligibility Test was introduced to recruit teachers who teach in classes 1 to 8. The secondary grade teachers have to qualify in paper 1 and the graduate teachers have to clear paper 2.

The Tamil Nadu government has introduced weightage marks system in 2012 - under which 60% weightage will be given to TET marks and 40% weightage will be given to the academic performance in board exams and degree exams.

Many candidates who cleared with high marks in TET could not get selected as teachers due to the wieghtage marks system.

 “The state universities follow different evaluation system. Some universities may correct papers liberally and other universities may evaluate papers conservatively. There was no level playing field for all the candidates,” an official from the school education department said.

It has mainly prevented old candidates who had graduated from conservative school and college system where the first class was deemed as big achievement.

Considering the requests from various sections, the common syllabus board of the school education department has recommended to replace the weightage marks system with the competitive exam.

Based on the recommendations, “The school education department has decided to consider the TET exam as only the qualifying exam for teaching up to 8th standard. For the selection of government school teachers a separate competitive exam will be held for TET qualified candidates,” the school education department said in the order.