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.
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.
