Sunday, Oct 19, 2008
Complaints galore on its mode of functioning

• NCTE paid scant attention to quality of training: panel
• Teacher-training institutions to be linked to university departments
  

New Delhi: The Centre is likely to introduce a Bill in the current session of Parliament to repeal the National Council for Teacher Education Act with a view to closing down the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) and to have the teacher-training institutions under it linked to university departments.

The decision to repeal the 1993 Act was based on the recommendations of a three-member committee appointed by the Human Resource Development Ministry in the wake of numerous complaints about the NCTE functioning. Sources said the Bill was being finalised by the Union Law Ministry and it was likely to be introduced in the current session. During the last session, the government gave an assurance in the Rajya Sabha that steps were being taken to abolish the NCTE.


The committee, headed by former HRD Secretary Sudeep Banerjee, found that the NCTE had moved away from its mandate of ensuring quality teacher education and was preoccupied with sanctioning institutions.

Corruption
In the perception of the government, the NCTE — a statutory body that regulates teachers’ education — had resulted in unnecessary control and centralisation of affiliation/recognition of educational institutes that had brought in the associated problem of corruption.

According to the committee, the NCTE paid scant attention to the quality of training and curriculum while fostering privatisation in teacher education. Added to this there are complaints from State governments that they were rarely consulted by the Council in sanctioning teacher-training institutions.

Lopsided development
Another charge was that it presided over lopsided development as a result of which Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra were crowded with teacher-training institutions while they were few and far between in Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand. In Maharashtra, 250 institutions offering Diploma in Education were opened in 2006-2007 alone.

Set up in 1973 as an advisory body for the Central and State governments on all matters of teacher education, the NCTE became a statutory body in 1995. With the NCTE now presiding over 7,000 institutions, the committee has suggested that they be affiliated to university education departments so that teacher education is not disturbed. The Bill would give statutory backing to the universities to deal with affiliation/recognition of teacher training institutes within their jurisdiction.