VCs resolve to bring teacher education under varsity system

Vice chancellors from across the country today resolved to bring the entire gamut of teacher education under university system, rationalise the duration of the B.Ed and M.Ed courses and ask teacher training institutes to go for mandatory accreditation.
A meeting here attended by vice chancellors of central and state universities along with education bodies such as UGC, NEUPA, NCTE, NCERT, further decided to bring the teaching profession on par with any other professions with relevant interventions, officials said.
National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), as part of the convergence initiative, will collaborate with UGC to engaging all central, state and private university education department to reform teacher education curriculum, they said.

It will also negotiate with UGC to start refresher course programme for teacher educators in all academic staff colleges under the universities.
HRD Minister Smriti Irani, who inaugurated the meeting, directed NCTE to develop database of all teacher educators in the country for capacity building.
Convergence of resources among the central, state and higher educational bodies to enhance quality of teacher education remained the underlying theme of the meet, which was held a day after the Irani chaired a meeting of the central university VCs in Chandigarh.

With quality of teacher education remaining a contentious issue, it was resolved that pre-service education of teachers for the secondary and higher secondary level as well as elementary level will be brought under university system.

"So far teacher education in the country has remained scattered impeding infusion of quality," officials said.
An uniform rationalisation of the B.Ed and M.Ed programme was also underlined at the meeting as the duration of such programmes vary from institute to institute. The overall consensus was on fixing the durations to two years, they said.
Today's meeting also decided to set up a committee to look into the implementation of the recommendations of the Justice Verma committee on teacher education.