Deswal, A. 2017. Business of Teacher Education in Haryana. Economic and Political Weekly, 52(11): 62-66.
Table of Contents
Teacher Education
The paper begins by establishing the significant role of teachers in the development of children and of the nation at large. This builds the base for the need of a sound teacher education system. Deswal enlists the various reforms in teacher education and highlights that various policies and curriculum frameworks emphasise the need to reform teacher education in terms of its structure, curricula, duration, assessment and the like. She points out that in this light, NCTE has been unable to maintain the standards of teacher education. In specific, self-financing has been identified as the root cause of decline in quality of teacher education.
Self Financing Education
Deswal briefly traces the history of self financing education in the country to pre-independence times. She points out that this has led to increase choices for students from whom these educational institutions earn profits. Thus, despite greater choices of courses and institutions, education has become costlier for students. This is also applicable to teacher education.
Initially, private teacher education colleges served the purpose of meeting the demand of teachers at all levels of school education and increasing access to education across the country. Reforms in teacher education have remained restricted to increasing the duration of the same teacher education courses, since 2015.
Private Teacher Education Colleges
The paper presents a detailed case of teacher education in self financed colleges in the state of Haryana. Since the year 2000, the number of privately managed teacher education colleges has increased from 04 to 508. It further states that there are over 60000 seats in B.Ed colleges. Almost half of these remained vacant in the session 2015-16. It further goes on to present data on D.Ed colleges.[1]
While discussing admissions to M.Ed, Deswal specifies that seats in this course also remain vacant and several counselling sessions were organized in the session 2015-16. This led to the session starting only in the month of December 2015. Increase of duration of the teacher education programme to two years is also considered to be a reason for fall in demand and admissions in teacher education colleges. “Thus, the private teacher-education sector mushroomed and presently it is declining due to unavailability of students for teacher-education courses.” (p. 63)
Accreditation in Teacher Education Colleges
Deswal also writes about the high level of corruption in the processes of colleges getting recognition for running teacher education courses. This has reduced colleges to profit making initiatives with little credence to quality of education. Colleges run with a lack of infrastructural facilities or poor quality resources. Teaching staff is not appointed on a regular basis and often exists only on paper.
Owing to reduction in admission, in 2009, entrance examination was abolished and qualifying marks for admission were also decreased. Lack of requirement in private colleges for students to attend classes has led to students preferring admission in private colleges over government colleges. Difficulties in affiliation and accreditation processes, employment of unqualified teacher educators on low salaries, and improper implementation of rules and regulations are other problems plaguing the private teacher education institutions.
Concluding Remarks
Deswal suggests proper implementation of rules, regular inspections of colleges and strict action against defaulting institutions.
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The article was written in 2017. In six years things may have changed. In light of NEP 2020, and changes in NCTE, it is expected that major changes will be seen in the coming years.
[1] Surprisingly, the paper presents D.Ed as Doctorate of Education rather than Diploma in Education.