Taking ahead the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to enhance the quality of teachers and teaching in the country, the HRD Ministry together with State Education departments, UGC and teachers body NCTE resolved towards strengthening teacher education.
Chaired by HRD Minister Smriti Irani, the meeting was attended by vice-chancellors of Central and State universities along with education bodies such as UGC, NEUPA, NCTE, NCERT which decided to bring the teaching profession on par with any other professions with relevant interventions. This was the first of its kind initiative in the country taken by the HRD Ministry.
The meeting resolved to bring the entire gamut of teacher education under university system, rationalise the duration of the B.Ed and M.Ed courses and ask teacher training institutes to go for mandatory accreditation.
National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), as part of the convergence initiative, will collaborate with UGC to engaging all Central, State and private university education department to reform teacher education curriculum, they said. It will also negotiate with UGC to start refresher course programme for teacher educators in all academic staff colleges under the universities. Irani directed NCTE to develop database of all teacher educators in the country for capacity building.