Although the states too hold their own Teacher Eligibility Tests, it's the central test alone that facilitates the selection of elementary teachers at central schools such as the Kendriya and Navodaya Vidyalayas and government schools in the Union territories, including Delhi. Sources in the Central Board of Secondary Education, which has been conducting the test in May and September every year since 2012, blamed the delay on the National Council of Teacher Education, the teacher education regulator. Another problem was some rural private schools' tendency to bypass the test and directly recruit teachers for elementary classes, taking advantage of loopholes in the language of the guidelines, they said. "We have requested the Centre to ask the states to act against private schools that ignore the eligibility qualification while recruiting teachers." Mala Gupta, a teacher at Springdales School, a private school in Delhi, said private schools in the capital do require their elementary teachers to have passed the eligibility test.

Source: The Telegraph October 23, 2017 22:18 UTC