Mass failure in Bihar has left many appalled as a whopping 83 per cent of candidates who appeared for the Teachers' Eligibility Test (TET) examination flunked.

The Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) on Thursday declared the results of the TET exam in which only 17 per cent candidates managed to pass.

The results for this exam which was conducted in June this year at 348 centers was declared by BSEB chief, Anand Kishore.

BSEB chief informed that the TET examinations conducted for candidates to qualify as teacher for class 1 to class 5, a total of 43,000 candidates appeared but just 7,038 (16.36 per cent) passed.

Similarly, exams conducted for class 6 to class 8, a total of 1,68,700 candidates appeared for the exams but just 30,113 (17.84 per cent) passed.

The cut off pass percentage was kept at 60 per cent for general category candidates, 55 per cent for backward class candidates and 50 per cent for SC-ST candidates.

The aforementioned failure might have appalled many, but has hardly managed to shock people since the results of the Matric and Intermediate examinations, where 49 per cent and 64 per cent failed in the exams, respectively, this year.

Importantly, the poor performance of the students in the exams is also being attributed to poor standard of the teachers because of which Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has announced compulsory retirement of non-performing teachers who are above the age of 50.