CHENNAI: Juggling time to prepare for Tamil Nadu Teachers' Eligibility Test (TNTET) while also working as a full-time Tamil teacher in a private school and as a theatre artist, this 32-year-old trans woman is hoping to clear it and land a government job to inspire the community.
Noting how several trans persons turned up for TET paper I & II, Marakkah said it should nudge the government to extend horizontal reservation and leniency in pass marks for trans persons to encourage and enable them to become government school teachers.
Speaking to DT Next, Marakkah said she prepared during the little time she got between her regular job at a private school in Kundrathur, her activism, and practising for drama as a theater artist.
"After working for close to a decade as a special educator and Tamil teacher, my salary finally rose to Rs 20,000 this year. If I get monetary assistance or government support in terms of reservation, I would be a trans government teacher. It is high time the State had its first trans teacher in government schools," she said.
The Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB) conducted TNTET, the first since 2023, on Saturday and Sunday, with 92,412 candidates appearing for paper I on Saturday and 3.31 lakh on Sunday.
Candidates clearing the exam and interview will be eligible to teach classes 1 to 10 as per the minimum qualification set by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE).
Marakkah said both Tamil and English language papers were easy. “Psychology questions had to be taken time to comprehend and write, while science and mathematics were relatively easier than expected."