Of the 9,468 students who appeared for the SET this year, only 127 qualified — a meagre pass percentage of 1.34 per cent.

According to the results, which were released earlier this week, the worst performers were the students appearing for the science subjects. In Mathematics, only two students qualified and in Life Sciences and Physical Science the number of students qualifying SET was one and three respectively.

For Arts subjects, the pass percentage was better — 18 students qualifying with History, 17 with Bangla and 12 with Economics.

Over the last few years, the number of students passing SET has been low and last year the pass percentage was 4.5 per cent. However, this year it touched a new low. The abysmally low pass percentage is recorded by the best of students who secured at least 55 per cent in their post-graduate examinations from various universities in the state.

“The results have been very poor this year. What concerns is that in future when we will have vacancies in the colleges we will not be able to find candidates to fill them,” said Himanshu Sekhar Ghosh, Chairman of the College Service Commission , which conducts the SET.

Ghosh said that the reason for such poor performance is the lack of comprehensive knowledge of the subject among the students.

“Moreover, they are not serious about the examination. In many cases even the seal of the answersheets were not opened and they were left blank though each student paid Rs 550 for the examination,” said Ghosh. According to experts, the decline in the figures point out that the best of students are not fit enough to teach in the colleges of the state.

“Most of the students are depended on private tuition. They do not follow textbooks but study selective questions. That is why they are not able to qualify the examination,” said an official of the commission.