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Version 20 Oct 08, edited final1992-93 101 782006-07 210 247(Source: NCTE, Selected Educational Statistics, 2006-07).In Kerala also, the past several years have seen an uncontrolled increase in thenumber of private institutions that prepare teachers, in particular private unaidedcolleges (Table 4.4). Given Kerala’s declining birth rates and an average annualretirement rate of 5 per cent the state would require no more than 8,000 teachersevery year. Yet, these institutions combined produce at least 4-5 times that numberevery year.This unchecked expansion of self-financed primary teacher-training institutions sincethe mid-1990s has generated a series of new problems for the states’ educationalsystems. On the one hand, the expansion in teacher-training institutions contributesto increased opportunities for higher education and employment within the state; onthe other hand, these new institutions, oriented towards private profit, rather thanthe public good, have created new issues of economic equity and educational qualitywhich the state has neither the capacity to monitor nor, despite a protracted legalbattle, the authority to resolve (for an in-depth discussion of the privatisation ofhigher education in India, see J.B.G. Tilak 1999).Different individuals interviewed during the course of this fieldwork citedinnumerable 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 inMaharashtra reportedly required a Rs. 3 lakh ‘donation’. However, given the excesssupply of trained primary school teachers and the consequent difficulties inobtaining employment after completing D.Ed, this price has reportedly come downto Rs.1 to Rs.1.5 lakh currently. Private teacher-training colleges are known toinclude faculty already employed elsewhere on their official paperwork, but actuallyuse B.Ed rather than Master of Education (M.Ed) graduates to teach their courses,often borrowing these from other institutions as needed. Multiple instances werealso cited of institutions receiving permission to operate half way through theacademic year and then cramming the syllabus into the remaining number of days inorder to be able to examine students in the same year. Stories of inadequateinfrastructure and facilities abound. There is no regulation and no parameters bywhich the quality of these institutions can be measured; neither is thereaccountability.A separate issue has to do with the isolation of institutions responsible for teachertrainingat the primary level. In all states included in this study, these institutions fallunder the purview of the relevant State Council of Educational Research andTraining (SCERT) and are thus completely isolated from contact with centres forhigher education, intensifying the perception of primary education as an arearequiring few skills and little knowledge. Teacher-training for secondary education,in contrast, normally consists of the B.Ed degree which is offered by universityfaculties.Content and processAnother glaring lacuna is that the NCTE has not been able to modernise the teachereducation curriculum. While a national curriculum framework for teacher education44
Version 20 Oct 08, edited finalwas first developed in 1978 and then updated in 1998 and again in 2005, the focusremains on rote-based learning.The transactional approach has remained confined to the lecture method with little scope fortrainees to actively participate in the training process (…) the conventional teaching approachadopted by NCTE trains teachers to ‘meticulously’ plan lessons in standardised formats, fill theritual of delivering and supervising the required number of lessons as also the ritual of completingthe required number of written assignments and projects. The conventional approach alsopresumes that repeated practice of teaching isolated lessons is sufficient for the professionaltraining of teachers (NCTE Review Committee 2007).Despite major reviews and changes in some states, attempts to reformteacher-training programmes have run into major hurdles, both conceptualand logistical. A brief history of a recent initiative to reform the D.Edcurriculum in Maharashtra is instructive. In 2001, MSCERT decided to revise theD.Ed curriculum in light of the 1998 framework for teacher education released byNCTE. The committee established for this purpose decided to use a ‘differentmethod’ for designing the curriculum. It decided to ‘keep aside the old syllabus, andthink about how we want our teachers to be’.In particular, three aspects of the new curriculum represent a significant departurefrom earlier practice: Integration of content and methodology in the teaching of school subjects(languages, mathematics, science, etc.) with the objective of getting D.Ed studentsto study each subject in terms of the concepts to be taught to their future studentsat each level, rather than simply memorising a series of facts to be transmitted. Inclusion of a paper on ‘action research’—defined as the application of thescientific method to the resolution of a problem faced or observed by theresearcher (student) during the course of teaching. Every D.Ed student isrequired to undertake an action research project during the two years ofcoursework. Inclusion of a six-month internship after the two years of coursework, as arequirement for D.Ed.The Government of Maharashtra approved the new D.Ed curriculum in 2004 andimplemented it in all D.Ed colleges as of 2005, the same year in which the NationalCurriculum Framework (NCF) was released. Evidently, therefore, the newcurriculum bears no reference to NCF 2005, drawing extensively on earlier nationallevel documents (NCF 2000 and the Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education2002). In 2005 state-wide orientation was given to all colleges of education, in theform of a training workshop. However, the rapid expansion in the number of teacher-training colleges implies that many institutions have not had the opportunity toattend even this orientation. Since then, no follow-up has been done to find out howthe colleges are coping with the very extensive changes made to the curriculum.The new D.Ed curriculum includes a large amount of radically new content, forwhich teacher educators are ill-prepared. Particular problem areas cited by teachereducators include ‘action research’, ‘models of teaching’, ‘psychology experiments’,‘gender sensitisation’, and ‘ICT in education’. At the request of the D.Ed colleges, avariety of institutions such as DIETs, B.Ed colleges and Institutes for AdvancedStudy in Education (IASE) offer sporadic and ad hoc training workshops for D.Edfaculty. Yet, there is no coordination of content or scheduling between the different45
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