National Education Policy 2020 has rightly understood the importance of enhancing the quality of teaching and building their capacity has again occupied the center stage of the policy discourse.
Union Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan on May 17 reviewed the report on institutional mechanism for capacity building of teacher/faculty in higher education institutes.
The Minister called for a “Malaviya Mission” to develop an enabling ecosystem across the country for teacher education/faculty development.
He said that a multi-dimensional approach to upskill faculty aligned with the challenges of 21st century India must be adopted. Mentioning the focus of National Education Policy 2020 on teacher education, he called for a multidisciplinary approach towards teacher education with focus on Indian values, languages, knowledge, ethos, and traditions.
A majority of stand-alone TEIs – over 10,000 in number – don’t even attempt serious teacher education, and are just selling degrees for a price, according to Justice J. S. Verma commission (2012) constituted by the Supreme Court.
Now, the high status of the teaching profession and respect for teachers must be restored to inspire the best to enter into this profession.
Malaviya Mission
The scheme of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching aims to address shortcomings relating to teachers and teaching in schools, higher education institutes and technical education institutes using the best international practices for excellence. It aims to create and strengthen the institutional mechanisms for training teachers. Teachers will be given refresher courses and retrained in generic skills, pedagogic skills, discipline specific content upgradation along with ICT and technology enabled training.
A total of 5,62,138 trainees have undergone professional development training under this mission
National Education Policy on Teacher education
NEP 2020 devised many solutions to enhance the quality of teachers. Some of these include
– A large number of merit-based scholarships shall be instituted across the country for studying quality 4- year integrated B.Ed. programmes.
– Excessive teacher transfers will be halted.
– Teacher Eligibility Tests (TETs), with respect to the subjects they are teaching, will be strengthened to inculcate better test material, both in terms of content and pedagogy
– Ensuring that by 2030, only educationally sound, multidisciplinary, and integrated teacher education programmes are in force, and dysfunctional Teacher education institutes will face strict action.
– A system of multiple parameters for proper assessment of performance will be developed by State/UT Governments and teachers will be incentivised to do their best work.
– Faculty with training in areas of social sciences that are directly relevant to school education e.g.psychology, child development, linguistics, sociology, philosophy, economics, and political science as well as from science education, mathematics education, social science education, and language education programmes will be attracted and retained in teacher education institutions.
Malaviya Mission has already went lengths in realising some outcomes envisioned in NEP.
The ‘Schools of Education’ component of Malaviya mission offers new academic programmes to meet the professional needs of teacher education, such as teacher educators, administrators and leadership positions at different levels ranging from elementary, secondary, higher and technical education levels. Till date, 66,647 participants have enrolled for this program.
