Teacher Education in India

“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world” – Malala Yousafzai. Quality education plays an important role in one’s life which helps him/her to be socially acceptable, increase in job opportunities, economically sound etc so role of educators is of immense importance in providing quality education. The learning crisis is evident in the fact that almost half of the children in grade 5 in rural India cannot solve a simple two-digit subtraction problem, while 67 per cent of children in grade 8 in public schools score less than 50 per cent in competency-based assessments in mathematics.

Reasons behind poor quality of teachers
  • Current teachers training in India is unable to cover tough spots and follows a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.
  • India is dealing with a scenario of significant teacher vacancies, which are to the tune of almost 60-70 per cent in some states.
  • there are over one lakh single-teacher schools present across the country.
  • Increased workload on the teachers (Mid-day meal, election duty etc.) and not following standard Teacher student ratio (1:30).
  • Absence of proper monitoring system for evaluating the performance of the teachers and no proper feedback providing system.
  • Results of TET shows dismal figures of only 3-4 percent of them passing the eligibility test.
  • Around 20 percent of regular teachers and 40 percent of contact teachersdid not have professional qualifications for elementary education. (NCTE study).
  • Increase in the culture of the private coaching classes and involvement of teachers there.
  • Appointment of Ad-hoc teachers because of the lack to adequate number of qualified and properly trained teachers
  • Wide spread corruption at various levels in teaching (management level, Internal politics etc.)
  • A National Council of Educational Research and Trainingstudy finds there is no systematic incorporation of teacher feedback into designing trainings, and little variation or consideration of local issues. There is no measure of whether this is translated into classroom practice.
  • Nearly half the teachersbelieve that not all children could achieve excellent educational outcomes because of their socioeconomic backgrounds.
  • Only 25% incorporate activity-based learningand 33% use storytelling or role-play in their pedagogic approach, either because these weren’t priorities or because they did not have time.
  • The National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC), responsible for quality-standards in higher education, has only covered 30 per cent of all institutes since its establishment back in 1994.
  • Till date, there is no accurate real-time database of the number and details of teacher education institutes, students enrolled and programmes offered.
Opportunities present
  • There are 17,000-odd Teacher Education Institutes (TEIs) that are responsible for preparing teachers through programmes such as the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed), and Diploma in Elementary Education (D.El.Ed).
  • Taking their sanctioned intake into account, at full operation, these TEIs could generate over 19 lakh freshly trained teachers every year as against the estimated annual requirement of 3 lakh teachers.
  • To put things in perspective, currently, there are about 94 lakh teachers across all schools in India.
  • Every year, the teacher education system could therefore be producing one-fifth of the total number of school teachers.
Government Initiative so far
  • The Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) launched the National Initiative for School Heads’ and Teachers’ Holistic Advancements (NISHTHA) recently, aimed at training over 42 lakh teachers across the country.
  • The ministry of human resource development and the National Council for Teacher Education in collaboration with non-government stakeholders launched the National Teacher Platform or Diksha in 2017.
  • Diksha is envisioned as a one-stop solution to address teacher competency gaps through courses that address their skill gaps and by empowering them to “learn what they want, where they want”.
  • State initiatives like RISE (Rajasthan Interface for School Educators), Rajasthan’s version of Diksha.
  • National Council for Teacher Educationplans and co-ordinates the development of teacher education system throughout the country.
  • Justice Verma Commission and Poonam Batra Committeewas appointed to look into teacher education. Their recommendations were based on creating new teacher education programmed in multi disciplinary environments.
Way forward for Teacher Education in India
  • The World Development Report On Education (2018)states that “teacher skills and motivation both matter” and that individually-targeted, continued training is crucial to achieving learning improvements through teachers.
  • Better incentives for teachers:Post training, there should be no differences in the salary of teachers, public or private. This will attract the best young minds towards this profession and will help it regain lost ground.
  • Investments in teacher capacity through stronger training programmes. Teachers need to unlearn and relearn the subjectsand the way it should be taught. There is no point in teaching and employing rote learning, for just passing the examination.
  • Teacher training programmes should be complemented by focus-group discussions with local NGOs and community-based organizations.
  • The teacher training models should have the ability to provide continuous professional development through a blended model, complementing existing physical trainings.
  • A technology-enabled platformwhich allows training to become a continuous activity rather than an annual event is necessary.
  • Another core determinant of quality is the curriculum which must be regularly revamped and revised to ensure that our teacher education system is aligned to global standards.
  • Ideally, given that teacher education requires a good mix of curricular inputs and good-quality pedagogy, experts are rightly advocating for a shift towards integrated four-year subject-specific programmes to be housed in multidisciplinary colleges and universities.
  • A common accreditation framework should be designed through a consultative process including all relevant stakeholders to facilitate its wider acceptability.
  • A transparent and credible system of accreditation could form the bedrock for weeding out substandard TEIs and propelling quality improvements in the rest.
  • Given the extensive landscape of the teacher education sector alone and current capacity constraints, it is necessary that multiple accreditation agencies be empaneled.
  • Apart from creating good content, it is also important to consider teachers’ technology consumption patterns, the potential of gamification to drive up engagementand the role of headmasters in promoting teachers’ professional development.

Reforms must be driven by administrative will and executed through a well-established governance mechanism, clearly establishing ownership and accountability for set work streams across multiple agencies. Economist Eric Hanushek finds that a child taught by a good teacher gains 1.5 grade-level equivalents, while a child taught by a bad teacher only gets half an academic year’s worth. The pressing need of the hour is to focus on providing the best quality teacher education to those who aspire to build the future of this country.