BHUBANESWAR: Even as there is no dearth of aspirants for teacher training courses in the state, limited seats remain a cause of concern. Over 90,000 students had applied for Bachelor of Education (BEd) course this year for just 2,400 seats. Odisha at present has 29 higher education institutes - universities, government colleges and standalone teacher education institutes - that offer BEd, MEd and BHEd (Bachelor of Hindi Education) with the National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE) restoring recognition of 16 such institutions.
While 10 of the institutions have 100 BEd seats each, one has 150 seats and the rest have 50 each. The institutes have combined seat strength of 2,400 with the course being offered in self-financing mode in government colleges like BJB, SB Women’s, Rajdhani, SCS-Puri. As per admission statistics this year, 93,000 students had applied to the 29 institutes. The applications, though, were only 1,922 in case of BHEd and 1,097 for MEd. While admissions to BEd colleges concluded on November 3, officials said all the 2,400 seats have been filled up.
“Since there is a crisis of trained teachers at schools, the state government should increase the BEd seats to meet the students’ demand and also put in place a mechanism to monitor teaching-learning quality regularly in the institutions,” said Prakash Mohanty, secretary, Odisha Secondary School Teachers Association.
Odisha is the only state in the country where private colleges are not allowed to start BEd courses since 1982. Owing to a limited number of seats, most aspirants pursue the degree from private BEd colleges in other states, primarily from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.
Apart from the institutions, the Central University of Odisha and the Regional Institute of Education, Bhubaneswar, also offer two-year teachers’ training courses. This year, IIT-Bhubaneswar has launched the four-year Integrated Teacher Education Programme in Bachelor of Science (BSc) with BEd in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Economics.
IN DIRE STRAITS
Odisha has 29 institutes offering teacher training courses
2,400 seats allotted for BEd
No pvt colleges allowed to offer BEd
Aspirants pursue the course from other states, mainly AP
This year, IIT-BBS launched 4-yr integrated teacher edu prog