HYDERABAD: The latest among a slew of measures undertaken by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to revamp country’s technical education is a policy designed to boost the competency of the faculty. AICTE has made it mandatory for all aspiring teachers, who want to teach at technical institutions, to undertake a semester-long teacher-training certification programme.
A person will not be hired to teach at any technical institution, like an engineering college, unless s/he undergoes this mandatory course under this policy which is scheduled to be implemented from this academic year.
The teaching community and institute management bodies have lauded the policy which, they say, will help new teachers in understanding how to formulate the lesson plans, lab and research work and also help the in-service teachers to upgrade their skill set, as the completing eight-module course is mandatory for receiving a promotion.
However, despite its good intentions, the policy is being criticised for not being specific enough especially about who will conduct the faculty development training and the mode in which it will be done. Moreover, as the current academic year has already begun, there is skepticism about its implementation from this year itself.
Balakrishna Reddy, President, Telangana Technical Institutions Employees Association finds the policy framework ‘more like a skeleton’. “We don’t know if the programme will be free or paid and what will be the kind of support colleges will provide. Furthermore, the said course requires around 45 days of a semester which will be difficult to allot because the academic year has already begun. It would be better if they revised the policy and implemented it from 2019 onward”, he said.
Dr Srini Bhupalam, chairman, NRI Institute of Technology has already sent out notices to its teachers about the mandatory training programme. However, he finds the six-month training tedious for the existing faculty with their current workload of teaching and assessment and wants the duration extended to at least one year. “It would have been better if the direction had come during summer vacation,” he added.
Meanwhile, the policy has brought some hope for senior faculty in engineering colleges that have faced mass layoffs in the past few months due to reduction in the teacher-student ratio from 1:20 to 1:15.
A lecturer who was shown the door by a top engineering college and is presently teaching at a second-tier college in Secunderabad at half of his previous pay, told Express that if the training is paid, mandatory and only for faculty falling in 0-5 years experience bracket, colleges might stop recruiting freshers and demand only those with ten-plus years of experience.
‘Learning for teachers is lifelong’
Speaking at the Maulana Azad Urdu University last month, AICTE chairman, Prof Anil D Sahasrabudhe had emphasised that learning for teachers should be lifelong and mandatory for recruitment as well as their promotion. The policy document reads that the in-service training programme will be requirement-specific to the teachers, conducted at various levels of their career, but does not mention if it will be linked to giving out promotions.
‘Universal human values’ are priority
“Training in human values through an appropriate process of self-exploration happens to be the most important component of the training of teachers,” the policy reads. After school teachers, faculty of technical institutions will are to absorb ‘universal human values’.
Mixed feelings among students for latest induction program
Another new initiative AICTE introduced in the current year is that of a three-week long induction for freshers in technical institutions. While the regulatory body swears by its necessity, it has evoked a mixed response from students. Jameel Hussain, a first-year polytechnic student feels the time spent in induction programme which a large number of students give a miss after the initial few days could be put to better use if classes are conducted instead of the programme.
While the AICTE mandates the programme to be a combination of motivation talks, interactions with renowned persons, yoga, games, student-faculty interaction, field trips, etc., according to students the programme mostly involves 8-hours of listening to uninspiring lectures. TM Aravind, another student, found that the events where students were given a chance to speak were interesting. “It help me overcome stage fear and gave an opportunity to interact with fellow students and faculty also,” he said.