Teachers Eligibility Test qualifying certificate to be valid for lifetime: Pokhriyal

The Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ on Thursday announced that the government has decided to extend the validity period of the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) qualifying certificate from 7 years to lifetime with retrospective effect from 2011. In 2020, the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) in its 50th meeting of the general body had approved the extension of the TET certificate validity from 7 years to a lifetime.

The respective state governments/UTs will take necessary action to revalidate/issue fresh TET certificates to those candidates whose period of 7 years has already elapsed, he added. The guidelines dated February 11, 2011, of the NCTE, laid down that TET would be conducted by the state governments and the validity of the TET certificate was 7 years from the date of passing TET.

Read | TET 2021: Status of all teacher eligibility tests held by CBSE, states

Pokhriyal said this will be a positive step in increasing the employment opportunities for candidates aspiring to make a career in the teaching field.

For a career in the elementary teaching profession in India, passing a relevant TET is mandatory. The national-level Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) is conducted by the CBSE and the CTET certificate is accepted when applying for a teaching post in elementary schools. The TET exams are also conducted at the state level by most states.

At the state level, while some states have already conducted the exam, others like UP and Rajasthan are counting on the pandemic situations to subside for conducting the exams.