In absence of recognition from the National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE), the fate of hundreds of students who have passed the Diploma in Elementary Education (D.El.Ed.) entrance examination hangs in balance claimed Sunil Agarwal the President of self financed educational institutes of Uttarakhand while addressing newsmen here on Sunday.
The Uttarakhand Vidhyalayi Shiksha Parishad (UVSP) had conducted an entrance examination for the first D.El.Ed course in the month of July this year, in the examination more than 55000 candidates appeared and the Parishad declared 652 candidates eligible for admissions in the D.El.Ed course in the District Institutes of Education and Training (DIET).
Agarwal informed that NCTE in a recent Right to Information (RTE) query has revealed that out of 13 DIETs in the State only the DIET of Roorkee is given recognition by it. He said that the education department had claimed that since the BTC courses are rechristened as D.El.Ed so there is no need to get recognition from NCTE for the nine DIETs as they were offering BTC courses. Agarwal claimed that the department had applied for recognition for all the 13 DIETs and all but one stuck because of objections. “ if the education department was right in its belief that it do not have to seek recognition for 9 DIETs, then why it applied for recognition for them”, Agarwal questioned. He informed that the NCTE is in process of formulating new guidelines for the colleges due to which there is no chance that these objections would be cleared in the near future.
It is worth mentioning here that the Supreme Court had directed that the recognition of the degree courses should be taken in advance before admitting students for that academic year. In absence of a proper recognition there is every possibility that the students of the first D.El.Ed course could loose one year. This qualification is now compulsory for those interested to become primary teachers in the country.