New+norms+for+teacher+education+mooted

New norms for teacher education mooted

Surbhi Bhatia, TNN Jun 15, 2009, 01.06am IST

Teacher education in India is all set for a revival. The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) will be coming out with a new curriculum for teacher-training courses. Also, the council will be laying down strict regulatory norms to check the quality of teacher education institutes and to curb the mushrooming of sub-standard private institutes. In fact, it has decided to put a curb on the number of teacher-training institutes a state can have.

"Teacher training in India has been getting diluted over the years. There are good, bad and even worse institutes offering teacher education programmes. NCTE has already shut down more than 150 sub-standard institutes. But along with this, there is also a need to improve the quality of education in the existing institutes. Therefore, we have decided to revise the teacher education curriculum, propose new norms for institutes, new qualification for faculty and new eligibility criteria for admission of student teachers," informed Mohammad Akhtar Siddiqui, chairperson, NCTE.

As per the new norms, the council has revised the minimum eligibility criterion for admission into a BEd course from 45% to 50%. As to the faculty at the teacher-training institutes, the council has increased the qualification level. Very soon, only those with a Master's or a PhD degree in one subject, Master's in education (MEd) and a National Eligibility Test (NET) score, would be eligible to apply as a faculty member at any of the teacher-training institutes. At present, those with a BEd and a Master's degree in any subject are eligible to apply for the post of a lecturer. The council is also mooting a national level Teacher Eligibility Test on the lines of National Eligibility Test (NET) to maintain faculty standard.

When it comes to curriculum, Siddiqui said, "It has been revised, keeping in mind the National Curriculum Framework (NCF-2005). We have addressed issues of environment and peace education. Content has been prepared for student teachers to know how to incorporate peace education in every subject that they would be teaching. Also, use of information and communication technology in the classroom is an emerging area. We have prepared content for that too. NCTE will be publishing the new guidelines soon," he said.

According to Siddiqui, there is no concept of improving teacher education in India. "This leads to stagnancy. The stress is only on pre-service teacher training. A one, two or a four-year BEd programme is not enough for a teacher. Hence, equal importance should be given to in-service teacher training programmes so that they stay connected with the latest developments around them. The ministry of human resource development (MHRD) will soon be revising the 1987 scheme for strengthening teacher education," he added.

Along with the quality of teachers, the quality of institutes offering teacher training programmes is also suffering. "There are 10,355 teacher education institutes, which offer 14,606 teacher training programmes. Around 1,78,261 students are admitted in these institutes. However, in the past, we observed that there was a mushrooming of sub-standard institutes in various states. In order to curb this growth we are in the process of conducting a survey on the demand and supply of teachers in various states. Any state that is churning out more teachers than the required number would not be permitted to have more teacher-training institutes. The study has already been conducted in the states of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. We found that these states have more institutes than needed. Soon we will issue a notification that no new teacher-training institute will be allowed to come up in these states," Siddiqui said.