BENGALURU: A large number of sub-standard, dysfunctional Teacher Education Institutions (TEI) are functioning as commercial entities, with no adherence to the most basic norms and standards, thereby calling for a complete overhaul of the Teacher Education System, a study by Azim Premji Foundation has revealed. The study, covering 35 private TEIs across 13 districts in five states, found institutional and academic corruption in them. While TEIs were granted licences to run teacher education programmes, based on fulfilment of NCTE norms, the study found that 26 out of 29 TEIs did not have the required number of teacher educators. Shockingly, only one out of the 29 institutes had a good faculty-student ratio.
Private institutes deliberately adopt corrupt practices to under-recruit faculty. They don’t have dedicated faculty for specific subject areas, retain part-time faculty who teach in multiple institutes, coerce faculty to appear as full-time faculty during inspections, pay faculty less than their payroll salary, appoint faculty without required qualifications, the research found.
As for adherence to basic curricular requirements that are needed to run the programme, there was clear neglect. Almost all private TEIs allowed students with shortage of attendance to appear for examinations. More than 60% of the TEIs allowed students who had not completed their school internships to appear for examinations. And at least 70% of them had an average attendance of students that was below 80%.
Subject practicums were not conducted at all in more than 30%of the institutes. Action research was unheard of in most and curriculum laboratories were not available in more than 50% of them. Beyond these quantifiable parameters, the researchers found that educational quality was much worse, as widely observed in their interviews of the faculty and teachers.
“These qualitative responses...underline how various malpractices, driven by commercial motives, generate a toxic institutional environment,” said the researchers. Clearly, even the very basic requirements of faculty, curriculum and instructional facilities for a sound teacher education system are thoroughly compromised, they added. If education has to improve, teaching has to improve and there is no way around this, say the researchers, pointing to the importance given to teachers’ role in the Draft National Education Policy 2019.