Over the last half a century and particularly, in the recent decades, teaching learning has been undergoing drastic changes. There has been a shift towards student centred classrooms with teacher’s role more as facilitator of learning rather than an autocratic master. Unlike in the past when the teacher was entrusted with transferring the contents of curriculum to a passive audience of students, today new experiments are being tried out in the classroom that includes project based learning, development of thinking skills, and discovery learning approaches. As part of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) the textbooks have also been modified (in my opinion, to make them worse than before in many respects).
Many teachers are not properly trained in implementing the concepts behind the new curriculum and many are not equipped to properly implement the curriculum.
The funniest thing is that the teacher education centres and the curriculum followed in the teacher education have very little focus on new trends in education. The SSA training programs have excluded the teacher educators and have been confined to in-service teacher training alone. The pre-service teacher education sector has been kept away from the SSA and therefore, the teacher aspirants passing out of the B.Ed colleges get exposed to the new curriculum only when they join the schools.
Teacher education institutions have been proliferating and mushrooming all over the State with profit motives until the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) with its headquarters in Bangalore, came up with and insisted on mandatory norms and standards for these institutions. As a result of their intervention, many institutions have constructed buildings with classrooms and procured infrastructure to meet their standards. These institutions were even been forced to increase the salary of teacher educators to the basic amount in the government scale. But later, the effectiveness of NCTE intervention reduced and the powerful lobby of private education institutions had their way in running their teacher education shops.
There are about 200 teacher education institutions in Kerala. Only four are in the government sector and seventeen are aided private institutions. The rest, which is more than ninety percent, are in the private and self financing sectors. These institutions exist as business centres for making profit. And the profit comes out of low overhead cost achieved out of low salary expenses of teacher educators who work on temporary basis or contract basis, with low salary without any benefits like pension, medical or maternity. Ninety percent of teacher educators are females, probably because this is not an attractive field for men. Such an unorganized workforce naturally invites education merchants.
When the honorable minister states his intention to improve teacher education centres as centres of excellence a question seems relevant – what is the chief component that gives worth in an educational institution? Undoubtedly, it is the faculty. Without dedicated efforts of the faculty members no institution can excel. However, at present, the salary and working conditions of the teacher educators is not lucrative enough to attract best talents into the field. The mere fact that a teacher educator with a doctorate in Education and 15-20 years or whatever experience can earn only a consolidated Rs.16000 per month itself is enough to ward off any aspirants.
Universities also run self financing B.Ed colleges usually with a Librarian, a Section Officer and part time sweeper as permanent employees of the University. The Principal and the teachers are on contract basis with contract renewed every year. As a result the Section officers get upper hand in the college administration. The Principals and the faculty members, who are usually females, do not get enough powers to establish discipline in the college or work for the advancement to the institutions. The salary of the Principal is Rs.15000 and a teacher educator is Rs.12000 per month. If a faculty has a Ph.D then she gets another Rs.1000 per month. While the nine percent of the teacher educators in the State who are working in the government as well as aided institutions earn UGC payscales with promotions as asst. professor, professors, readers etc. with all sort of service benefits, ninety one percent of the teacher educators work in private and self financing sector without any of these and working under job insecurity. Even when the periodical salary revisions increase the salaries of permanent employees sky high, their counterparts in the B.Ed centres can only dream of a meager rise. The powerful lobby of the private institutions are also said to influence the Universities’ reluctance in providing fair deal to the teacher educators. The NCTE, unlike in the past, seems to be silenced and remaining aloof and so does Hon. Minister for Education. Nobody wants to annoy the private education institution bosses. The B.Ed institutions are rarely attached to colleges or schools and exist separately. That itself provides ample scope for profit oriented managements to isolate the teacher education communities.
Thus, with a team of faculty, predominantly females, with high qualification and submissive and with meager remuneration that challenges even their self esteem, the teacher education is carried out. The B.Ed course is a single year course. The syllabus itself is riddled with problems of content irrelevance, poor standards, and absence of focus on essential areas etc. Even though the number of academic days is few, all sorts of co-curricular activities are carried out including a number of celebrations such as union day and festivals and even all India tour program. There is no substantial research going on in improving the education or evaluation of the existing programs. The evaluation of teacher trainees in the teacher education institutions is another big joke. The difference in the marks between high achievers and low achievers is minimal and the faculty members are least bothered in either encouraging the trainees to score high or to punish the lazy with low marks. Thus, most trainees who enter these institutions come out with flying colours.
As a result of all these, teacher education has become close to a farce in the country.
The academic isolation of teacher educators coupled with their poor salary and working conditions itself reflects the neglect of the administration on teacher education. It should not be forgotten that the quality of school teacher depends on the training he/she receives from the training institution and allowing teacher education to rot adversely impacts education sector. Hope that the Education ministry will start focusing on the B.Ed education, where the roots of the education system lie. Improving the teacher education would positively impact the education sector as a whole.
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