UPTET 2019 exam date: Here’s what officials have to say – education

Candidates of Uttar Pradesh Teacher’s Eligibility Test (UPTET)-2019 will have to wait for sometime before the state government announce the new dates for the test.

UPTET paper was to be held on December 22, 2019. It was postponed 48 hours ahead of the examination (on December 20) till further orders. Since then the candidates are eagerly waiting for the new dates.

Basic education minister Satish Dwivedi on Thursday said there has been no decision over the new dates. “We are working to find out a suitable date. We have to conduct the examination on a day so that it does not clash with any other major competitive examination. Availability of the centres is also a consideration,” the minister said.

“No fresh date decided yet. The new dates for the said examination will be announced soon,” said Renuka Kumar, additional chief secretary, basic education department.

Over 1.6 million candidates have registered

Over 1.6 million candidates, who have registered for Uttar Pradesh Teacher’s Eligibility Test (UPTET)-2019 were eagerly waiting to appear in the test on December 22 but its last minute postponement has only sprung a surprise for them.

“The postponement was really unexpected and I was unaware of it till Saturday morning as Internet services are suspended in Prayagraj for past over 36 hours and I could not check it on the Internet. The newspapers this morning informed about the postponement,” said Ankit Dubey, an aspiring school teacher registered to appear in UPTET-2019.

“Though I plan to keep my preparation tempo maintained, I am worried about downloading the admit card, which I have not been able to do owing to suspended Net services”, he added. He is not alone in this dilemma.

Till Friday evening, around 70,000 registered candidates in the state had not been able to download their admit cards, mainly owing to suspended internet services in various districts. Busy gearing up for the exam for the two-and-a-half-months, the postponement has taken the candidates registered for it only by surprise.

Officials now are waiting for the government to announce the fresh date for it so that they can yet again gear up for it. The last date for the candidates to register was November 20 while the last date to deposit the requisite fee was November 21, said officials aware of the development.

As per information received at Prayagraj-headquartered Exam Regulatory Authority, UP— the body entrusted with the task of conducting the exam—from National Informatics Centre (NIC), a total of 10,68,912 candidates have registered to appear in the exam at primary level while 5,65,337 have done so for the upper-primary level, an official said.

Popularity of the exam

The popularity of the exam can be gauged from the fact that UPTET-2018 held on November 18, 2018 attracted around 2.2 million (22 lakh) registrations of which 17.83 lakh candidates were issued admit cards. The primary level exam saw 11,01,645 out of the 11,70,786 appear in the exam while at the upper primary level also 5,71,416 appeared in the exam out of the total 6,12,930 candidates.

Candidates who have passed BTC, BEd or other National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) approved courses can appear in this test so as to become eligible to appear in Teacher’s Recruitment Exam—the final hurdle for a candidate to become a teacher in the government-run primary and upper primary schools.

NCTE allowed BEd pass candidates to apply for primary school teacher’s post just in June 2018 and this saw number of applicants rise dramatically in UPTET and this year also lakhs of BEd pass candidates are expected to apply.