NEW DELHI: In a bid to check substandard teachers being pumped into schools through mushrooming teaching institutions across the country, the National Council for Teachers Education (NCTE) — a regulatory body for school level teachers’ training — has begun mapping these institutions through Geographical Information System (GIS) and mandatory affidavits.
Ironically, the Union Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry does not have the data of number of teaching institutions as a large number of such institutions that churn out thousands of young teaching professionals are thriving illegally.
Government sources admit that the number of such teacher’s training institutions that provide degrees like BEd and other certificates courses — that makes them qualify to teach in schools — could be at least three times more than the figures made available by the NCTE.
According the NCTE, the total number of teacher training institutions across the country is 24, 234. Besides working as a regulatory body for school level teachers’ training, the NCTE also oversees procedures and standards for the Indian education system.
A senior HRD ministry official said that illegal teacher’s training institutions have created a huge pool of substandard teachers which is effecting the quality of school education in the country. “Funds allocated under schemes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) , Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) for promoting school education and for training teachers does not translate well on the ground level. The mushrooming teaching institutions are pushing huge numbers of substandard teachers into the school education system,” said the official on condition of anonymity.
The Supreme Court in March this year took a serious view of mushrooming of private BEd colleges in the country and pointed out that the quality of education must be a concern for all. The court’s observation came during the hearing of petitions moved by 32 private B.Ed colleges in Rajasthan seeking NoC from the NCTE to continue with BEd courses.
Noting that many students in the private B.Ed colleges were from Bihar and other states, the apex court observed that one could understand a student travelling long distances for admission in engineering or medical colleges. But it wondered why a student would travel that far for a BEd course.