Regulatory overhaul for teacher training colleges

The business of teacher education is set for a clean-up. And some would say long overdue.

The blueprint being wielded by the apex regulator, the National Council For Teacher Education (NCTE), promises drastic action against errant institutions—nearly 3,000 teacher education colleges may be barred from admitting fresh students from the next academic year. 

Simultaneously, by January next year, NCTE will put out a ranking of the top 100 teacher training institutes. 

While the move could potentially create some confusion, the government believes it is essential to curb the growth of poor quality institutions and bring about transparency in teacher training. 

“We have (given) approval for 18,000-19,000 courses running in around 15,000 institutions. The gap (those who have not submitted the baseline information) is around 3,000-4,000 colleges. We are giving time till 30 June and those who will not submit, cannot admit,” said NCTE chairman A. Santhosh Mathew. 

NCTE is the apex teacher education regulator in India and functions under the Union human resource development ministry. 

NCTE has already collected preliminary data through affidavits and show-cause notices it has served to around 12,000 institutions. 

Mathew said those who approach NCTE after the expiry of the deadline will have to undergo inspections ahead of admitting students. 

According to him, NCTE is hitting the reset on the grading system, with less emphasis on physical assets. Now on, physical assets will get just 10% weightage, 20% weight will go to academic assets, 30% to teacher transactions and 40% to students' learning outcome. Currently, there is no weightage on learning outcomes for approval or accreditation of such institutions, and it is solely driven by physical infrastructure. 

Learning outcomes are a weak link, something that has been confirmed by several studies including the Annual Status of Education Report published by education nonprofit Pratham. For example, the 2016 ASER report said the overall learning level among Indian students is “pretty disappointing”. The report underlined that one in two Indian students can’t read books meant for three classes below, a scenario that has not changed since 2009. 

“For years, we have given a lot of importance to physical assets; when are we going to talk about learning outcome? That’s what we are trying to do now. We are going to conduct a proctored test under which aspiring teachers will be videographed during practical classes. We shall run Big Data to score their performance,” Mathew said, adding both 

Source | Mint | 29 June 2017

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