primary school teachers the twists and turns of everyday practice

Version 20 Oct 08, edited final
1992-93 101 78
2006-07 210 247
(Source: NCTE, Selected Educational Statistics, 2006-07).
In Kerala also, the past several years have seen an uncontrolled increase in the
number of private institutions that prepare teachers, in particular private unaided
colleges (Table 4.4). Given Kerala’s declining birth rates and an average annual
retirement rate of 5 per cent the state would require no more than 8,000 teachers
every year. Yet, these institutions combined produce at least 4-5 times that number
every year.
This unchecked expansion of self-financed primary teacher-training institutions since
the mid-1990s has generated a series of new problems for the states’ educational
systems. On the one hand, the expansion in teacher-training institutions contributes
to increased opportunities for higher education and employment within the state; on
the other hand, these new institutions, oriented towards private profit, rather than
the public good, have created new issues of economic equity and educational quality
which the state has neither the capacity to monitor nor, despite a protracted legal
battle, the authority to resolve (for an in-depth discussion of the privatisation of
higher education in India, see J.B.G. Tilak 1999).
Different individuals interviewed during the course of this fieldwork cited
innumerable instances of corruption in establishing and operating these institutions.
To cite only a few examples: a few years ago, a seat in a private D.Ed college in
Maharashtra reportedly required a Rs. 3 lakh ‘donation’. However, given the excess
supply of trained primary school teachers and the consequent difficulties in
obtaining employment after completing D.Ed, this price has reportedly come down
to Rs.1 to Rs.1.5 lakh currently. Private teacher-training colleges are known to
include faculty already employed elsewhere on their official paperwork, but actually
use B.Ed rather than Master of Education (M.Ed) graduates to teach their courses,
often borrowing these from other institutions as needed. Multiple instances were
also cited of institutions receiving permission to operate half way through the
academic year and then cramming the syllabus into the remaining number of days in
order to be able to examine students in the same year. Stories of inadequate
infrastructure and facilities abound. There is no regulation and no parameters by
which the quality of these institutions can be measured; neither is there
accountability.
A separate issue has to do with the isolation of institutions responsible for teachertraining
at the primary level. In all states included in this study, these institutions fall
under the purview of the relevant State Council of Educational Research and
Training (SCERT) and are thus completely isolated from contact with centres for
higher education, intensifying the perception of primary education as an area
requiring few skills and little knowledge. Teacher-training for secondary education,
in contrast, normally consists of the B.Ed degree which is offered by university
faculties.
Content and process
Another glaring lacuna is that the NCTE has not been able to modernise the teacher
education curriculum. While a national curriculum framework for teacher education
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