After their jobs were saved by an amendment in NCTE act which gave retrospective recognition to their degrees of Special Basic Teacher Certificate ( BTC) in the month of December, the last hiccup of more than 16,000 special BTC teachers has got removed as the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) has given backdated approval to the curriculum of the six month course they had undergone at different District Institutes of Education and Training ( DIET).
In a meeting held in New Delhi on Friday, the officers of education department in presence of National Council Teacher Education ( NCTE) officials took up the case of these teacher to the NCERT. The meeting was presided over by the Joint secretary of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Manoj Garg. The secretary school education of Uttarakhand, R Meenakshi Sundaram who attended the meeting said that the ministry has sought some additional information which would be provided to it on Monday. It is pertinent to mention here that the Rajya Sabha (RS) in its winter session had passed the National Council for Teacher Education Bill (Amended) — 2019 which grants retrospective recognition to the teacher education courses of certain institutions. The bill had earlier been cleared by Lok Sabha.
In Uttarakhand there more than 16000 serving teachers who were appointed on the basis of special BTC course offered from in different DIETs from the year 2001 to 2016 by the state government. However in 2016 it was realised that the all important recognition from NCTE was not taken by the education department of Uttarakhand for the special BTC course. As per the new guidelines of the MHRD, only the Diploma in Elementary Education (DElEd) qualified candidates are eligible to teach the primary students. The HRD ministry had made it clear that after March 2019, all primary teachers who don’t have a DElEd degree or BTC certificate would be removed from post of primary teachers. The job of these teachers was saved by the retrospection grant of recognition of special BTC after the amendment in NCTE act.
