E-Paper
Central govt lays stress on BEd, MEd reforms
The government is planning to increase the duration of the B.Ed and M.Ed programmes from one year to two, as part of a broad set of reforms to improve teachers’ training.
The government is planning to increase the duration of the B.Ed and M.Ed programmes from one year to two, as part of a broad set of reforms to improve teachers’ training.
The decision came after human resource development minister Smriti Irani met vice-chancellors of more than 250 central and state universities on Monday.
Irani discussed ways to bring the courses at par with humanities and science curricula in universities. The present one-year format for B.Ed and M.Ed programmes was inadequate to train teachers, the V-Cs said.
“There was consensus on both issues, bringing all the teacher’s training programmes under the ambit of universities and extension of duration of the B.Ed and M.Ed courses,” a V-C who attended the meeting told HT.
The extension should be implemented in phases over five years, beginning with the academic year 2015-16 and ending in 2019-20, a committee set up by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) in July had said.
The Poonam Batra committee also directed teachers’ education institutions to offer multiple programmes in social sciences, sciences, humanities.
To improve quality of teachers’ education, the NCTE signed a MoU with the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) for evaluation of training programmes.
Irani also called for teachers’ education to be integrated with the higher education system. At present, though training programmes for teachers for secondary and higher-secondary levels are part of the university system, those for elementary schools are under the state boards.
The move follows Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s focus on teachers’ training during his Teachers’ Day address. The idea for reforms was first recommended in 2012 by the Justice Verma Commission.
Training teachers in information and communication technology (ICT) was also discussed in a meeting between the HRD ministry, the UGC, the NCERT and the NCTE. PM Modi had advised teachers in his September 5 address to train in ICT so that they could impart it to students.
