Teaching & NET · Government Exams

CTET Previous Papers

Past CTET papers are valuable chiefly for one thing: showing you what a pedagogy question actually looks like, and why the obvious answer is often wrong.

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CTET · checked 19 September 2026

The dates, vacancies and rules below are read on the conducting body’s own site and rewritten as each notice appears. The guide beneath carries the full pattern, syllabus, cut-offs and free mock tests.

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19September 2026

Checked 19 September 2026

CTET: the facts that matter now

01
22nd edition — notified 8 May 2026 as CTET September 2026; applications 11 May – 10 June and a second window 25 August – 1 September 2026…
Current cycle
02
21st edition, 7–8 February 2026: 26,49,129 registered, 23,24,625 appeared, 5,97,061 qualified (25.68 per cent); result 30 March 2026
Last cycle
03
Central Board of Secondary Education (CTET Unit, Dwarka, New Delhi) on behalf of the Ministry of Education, twice a year, under the NCTE…
Conducted by
04
Paper I for classes I–V; Paper II for classes VI–VIII; both if you want eligibility for both stages
Papers

Past papers

CTET — Reading previous papers properly

Pedagogy questions have a distinctive character. They present a classroom situation — a child making a particular error, a teacher choosing between approaches — and ask what is happening or what should be done. The correct answer usually reflects a specific principle: that errors are informative rather than merely wrong, that learning is constructed rather than transmitted, that assessment should support learning rather than only measure it. Recognising that orientation is what past papers teach.

A method for the pedagogy sections

Work past pedagogy questions and read every explanation. The reasoning matters far more than the answer, because it is what transfers.
Notice which principle each correct answer reflects. A small set of ideas — constructivism, child-centredness, formative assessment, inclusion — explains most of them.
Pay attention to the wrong options. They typically represent the intuitive, teacher-centred or punitive response, which is precisely what the exam is testing you to reject.
Do the same for subject pedagogy. Mathematics pedagogy and science pedagogy have their own recurring concerns — error analysis, activity-based learning, remedial teaching.

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The reasoning that pedagogy questions consistently reward

Errors are diagnostic, not failures — when a question describes a child making a particular mistake, the answer that treats the mistake as information about their thinking almost always beats the one that treats it as something to correct.
The learner constructs understanding — options that have the teacher explain, tell or demonstrate tend to lose to options that have the child explore, discuss or discover — the framework the syllabus is built on is constructivist throughout.
Assessment supports learning — continuous, informal and formative approaches are favoured over testing and grading, and options framed around ranking or comparing children are usually the distractors.
Difference is accommodated, not removed — inclusive responses that adapt to a learner beat responses that try to bring the learner into line with the group.

Those four principles account for a large share of the pedagogy answers across both the child development section and the subject pedagogy embedded in every content area. Working past papers with them in mind converts pedagogy from something that feels like guessing into something closer to a rule set — and the candidates who find the section unpredictable are usually the ones answering from their own experience of being taught rather than from the framework the syllabus specifies.

Pay particular attention to the wrong options. In a well-set pedagogy question the distractors are things a reasonable teacher might genuinely do, which is what makes the questions difficult — the choice is rarely between a good answer and a foolish one. Reading why a plausible option was rejected teaches the framework far more efficiently than reading why the correct one was accepted.

Practise subject pedagogy separately

Every content section carries its own pedagogy component — how mathematics is learned and where children go wrong in it, how language is acquired, how environmental studies is approached at the primary stage. These are examined as distinctly as child development is, and candidates who prepare general pedagogy alone find them unfamiliar.

Exam resources

Everything for CTET

Six resource pages, each kept in step with the latest official notification.

CTET SyllabusCTET syllabus — child development and pedagogy, language, mathematics, environmental studies, science and social studies for Papers 1 and 2.CTET Exam PatternCTET exam pattern 2026 — Paper 1 and Paper 2 sections, questions and marks, the 60 per cent qualifying line, no negative marking, shifts and pass rates.CTET Previous PapersCTET previous year papers — learning the pedagogy question style, which cannot be prepared for from content knowledge alone.CTET Mock TestsFree CTET mock tests — full Paper 1 and Paper 2 practice with no negative marking, scoring and section-wise analysis.CTET PreparationCTET preparation strategy — building pedagogical understanding, covering the content, and planning for a paper with no negative marking.CTET Study MaterialCTET study material — child development and pedagogy, language, mathematics, science and social studies notes at the relevant class levels.

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