More than 85,000 postgraduate teacher in Tamil Nadu have failed the mandatory Tamil language eligibility test conducted by the Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB), raising serious alarm over the quality of prospective teachers in a state that prides itself on linguistic identity.
The exam—introduced in 2022 as a compulsory qualifying test for all state competitive exams—required only 20 out of 50 marks and is widely considered equivalent to a Class 10–level Tamil paper. Despite this low bar, an overwhelming number of candidates, including many native Tamil speakers, failed to clear it.
The recruitment drive aimed to fill 1,996 PG teacher posts, with more than 2.2 lakh applicants appearing for the examination. Those who failed the Tamil eligibility paper were disqualified outright, as their primary subject answer sheets were not evaluated.
Educationists have expressed shock, calling the mass failure a reflection of deeper systemic problems in teacher training, linguistic proficiency, and academic standards in the state.
This mass failure is seen as a worrying indicator for Tamil proficiency and has prompted broader questions about the future quality of teaching and learning in government schools across the state, as many candidates had studied Tamil as their mother tongue throughout schooling but still failed to meet the minimum standard required for the teaching profession.
Source: Dinamalar
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