In another fiasco by the beleaguered Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), it was forced to postpone examinations for a large number of teacher aspirants on Thursday and Friday due to technical issues. The rescheduled dates are yet to be announced. This is the first time the examination is being conducted in an online computer-based mode.
The unit of Tata Consultancy Services, which had been contracted to conduct the Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) 2021 for the CBSE, said “on day one of the examination [December 16], unexpected technical issues impacted operations in certain venues, in the first shift.” In its Twitter statement, TCS iON said, “As a result, candidates in affected venues could not complete the exam. Consequently, we had to cancel the second shift examination.”
It went on to add that all candidates who were due to attempt the test in the second shift on Thursday and both shifts on Friday would be rescheduled to a later date. Examinations will be held as usual from December 20 onwards, it said.
The CBSE statement, on the other hand, claimed that the examination had “been conducted successfully across the country” in the first shift, while the second shift “could not be completed due to unexpected technical requirements”. A CBSE spokesperson did not respond to queries on the number of candidates affected.
Candidates thronged centres, blocked roads and took to social media to express frustration. “Our CTET exam has been postponed just before one day and we are getting msg at 9pm…we travelled 450km to reach exam city this winter,” said one candidate, named Rajnish.
The CTET is a minimum qualification examination for school teachers and was scheduled to be held from December 16 to January 13. Over 22 lakh candidates attempted the January 2021 edition. This year, it was decided to conduct CTET in online mode for the first time, to “motivate futuristic teachers to become computer literate and also save huge paper wastage on account of printing of question papers and OMR sheets,” the CBSE said in a public notice about the examination in July.
The CBSE has been taking flak in recent weeks for mistakes and sudden changes in its conduct of the first term board examinations for Class 10 and 12, which were being held in an objective type format for the first time.
