In a major initiative towards improving the quality of teachers’ education in the country, the HRD Ministry has approved a set of new regulations based on the recommendations of Justice Verma Commission, which has also suggested measures for checking the mushrooming “business” of teachers training education.
The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) has finally released the New Regulations and Norms & Standards for 15 programmes through the Gazette notification. While the new format covers pre-school, primary, elementary, secondary, senior secondary, art education, physical education, and open and distance learning, the NCTE is also planning to include into its fold yoga education and other forms of special education.
For the first time, NCTE has also succeeded in centralising the database of Visiting Teams (not allowing the regional committees to have manipulation and at times leading to corruption) to be followed by regional committees through a process of transparent randomised computerised selection process.
Further, each institute has to compulsorily go through assessment and accreditation within five years by NAAC or any other accrediting agency approved by NCTE. With this, all the existing 17,000 institutions now have to switch over to the new system of teacher education and adopt the new curriculum. Also, nearly one lakh teacher educators in the country need to go through continuing professional development from time to time.
Following the recommendations of Justice Verma Commission and under the direct supervision of the Supreme Court, NCTE brought these changes with a focus on improving the quality of teacher education and teachers in the country.
“This is probably the first major policy announcement in education by the BJP Government. This change has taken more than two years to happen; and it has not been easy for NCTE to finally come up with such complete overhaul. There has been long and stiff debates in the NCTE Council which is dominated by scholars having inclination to the left wing. Therefore, there have been compromises especially in respect of the qualifications to be a teacher educator,” said a HRD Ministry official.
While M.Ed or MA (Education) with B.Ed has been largely retained as the essential qualification, there have been compromises to have social science and science masters with B.Ed or B.El.Ed as qualifications for a few positions. In spite of strong pressure, PhD in science or mathematics education, without any background in teacher education, however could not be included in essential qualification.
“This is a victory for the teacher educator community in the country. NCTE has succeeded in preserving the sanctity of grounding in teacher education as essential to become a teacher educator. If the original Poonam Batra Committee report, constituted by the left-dominated NCTE Council, would have been accepted, the University Education Departments would have been closed down,” said P K Sahoo, president of Indian Association of Teacher Education (IATE).