Overhaul teacher training programmes

Mohd Hassan
State of education has been criticised for its weaknesses and deficiencies at every fora. Particularly Government schools are being widely criticized for failing to provide quality education. This forces many parents to take their wards to private schools. Ordinarily debates over education only goes on: number of schools established, students enrolment in schools, schemes like mid-day meal etc. attention needs to be paid to the real problems like content of textbooks and teacher education whether that is pre-service training course or in-service training course.
Recent order of the honourable high court regarding the screening test of  ReTs (Rehbar-e-Taleem) teachers with degrees from what it called “tuck shops” is a welcome move to reflect and strengthen teacher education system. The order raised a significant issue which was deliberately pushed aside by the Government.
A joint review mission of the centrally sponsored scheme for teacher education was conducted in Jammu and Kashmir in the first week of April 2013. This mission  consisted of many well-known experienced persons from the field of education and particularly teacher education. The team visited three regions of Ladakh, jammu and Kashmir. The foremost issue and concern that the committee strongly recommended was the  establishment of more robust institutions like a State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT), Institute of Advanced Studies in Education (IASEs) and more Colleges for Teacher Education.
Currently, there are two Government colleges for education, one in Jammu and another in Kashmir providing full time pre service teacher education viz. B. Ed. Besides there are 585 number of private colleges opened in the state providing B. Ed. Degrees although an order was  issued to ban   establishment of new private colleges. Irony is that there is not a  single body for setting academic standards, regulating and monitoring of teacher education in the state. Colleges of teacher education, including private colleges, come under the administrative control of the department of higher education. This regulation is bifurcated amongst the university’s College Development Council, the Directorate of Colleges, Higher Education, the Directorate of School Education, the J&K BOSE, the SIEs and the J&K BOPEE. Similarly, teacher education curricula (for secondary level and higher secondary) are the responsibility of the University departments of education. Curriculum development for
elementary teacher education is the responsibility of the J&K BOSE. There is an urgent need of a statutory body like the JRM has recommended to supervise teacher education programme viz a viz teacher education institutions.
Primarily there is need to recognize teaching as profession and teacher education as a process to prepare professional teachers. More fulltime pre service training courses are also needed  to be  introducd in these TEIs. This will help in preparing professional teacher. The recruitment policy must  change. Presently there is no requirement of any pre-service training course for applying teaching profession , on the other hand for professions like medical and engineering one must have professional courses. But there a great injustice has been done with the teaching. Fact is that teaching is not known as profession. Anyone having 10+2 qualification is eligible for teaching profession. Like other professions one must possess a teacher education course as prerequisite for applying to the  teaching post.  Teaching also needs competence, and commitments. Because quality and extent of students achievement are determined primarily by teacher competence, sensitivity and teacher motivation. Also academic and professional standards of teachers constitute essential learning conditions for achieving the educational goals.
There is also a dire need to overhaul the recruitment policy. Instead of the so called “general line teacher” and “ReTs”, Subject specific teacher should be recruited. Each and every subject requires different pedagogy. Teaching of science or social science is different from teaching of languages. Concepts like activity-based teaching, joyful learning, classroom management for large size classes, multi grade situations, team teaching, cooperative and collaborative learning must be understood by teachers. Subsequently variety of types of in-service training programmes need to be enforced so that teachers could understand and update themselves  on educational and social issues.
(The author is research student at CIE University of Delhi)

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