Key To Improve Education- Educate The Teacher's First

There is hardly any country that is not attempting to improve its Education system. Education of teachers not only facilitates improvement of school education by preparing competent, committed and professionally well qualified teachers who can meet the demand of the system, but also functions as a bridge between schooling and higher education.

India has one of the largest systems of teacher education in the world. Besides the university departments of education and their affiliated colleges, government and government aided institutions; private and self-financing colleges and open universities are also engaged in teacher education.

The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) was established in 1993 by an Act of Parliament. It is the all-powerful regulatory body for the teacher education system in the country, consisting of the Teacher Education Institutions. To fulfill the national commitment to education for all, India began a massive expansion of its schooling system in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This demanded a proportionate increase in the number of teachers. The NCTE was set up in this period, “with a view to achieving planned and coordinated development of the teacher education system”.

From 1993 to 2011, the NCTE presided over the development of what is perhaps the weakest teacher education system in any large country in the world. The institutional architecture, the curricular approach, and the key operational aspects such as faculty quality, are not only bereft of imagination and sound educational basis, but are designed to serve the consolidation of power of the NCTE. This power was then actively used to drive a system of graft where college licences were sold, with not even a modicum of consideration for even the most basic matters, such as whether the college being approved actually has faculty or not, or whether classes are conducted or not. 

Issues affecting the Teaching Scenario

Various issues of teacher education namely, institutional inaction, brand inequity, quality crisis, overgrowing establishment, rare humane and professional teachers, poor integration of skills, alienated and incompatible modes of teacher education, little contribution to higher education, domain pedagogy mismatches, identity crisis, rare innovations, stake holders' non-alignment, inadequate technology infusion, little choice base, poor research scenario, vision and vision mismatches, non-scientific manpower planning, illusive laboratories, over activism of distance/open universities, invalid recognition and accreditation and no teacher education policy.

Indian education system is also in corruption because of high rate of teacher absenteeism in the country was a key factor in education system in India. Teacher absenteeism does not just affect quality of education it is also a huge drain on resources resulting in the wastage of 22.5% of education funds in India.

Political interference also means education regulators like the University Grants Commission are unable to enforce norms and standards. A majority of Indian students are thus likely to go through education encountering indifferent teachers at school, badly-run public universities or unscrupulous private educators.

There are also many others small corruption taking place within the education system of India. These corruption are not only polluting the Indian education system but also killing our generation and the future of India.

Experts speak

“India is under the shadow of judiciary where laws certainly important but the problem lies in the context of implementing these laws in the right time and place”, said Shri Anil Swarup, Hon'ble Secretary Department of School Education & Literacy, MHRD, GOI.

Mr. Swarup expressed his views on the Educators of this system. The key to improvement of Education in India will be by educating the teachers first. There are certain degrees that come with no barrier and they can be easily availed by any individual. This happens to be the ground reality in this industry.

There should be a use of an appropriate and affordable Technology to train this bunch of educators only then the future generation will be secured. There is so much to be done in the Education sector, said the Honorable Secretary.