School pass-outs will from this academic session be able to pursue a four-year integrated course combining undergraduation and Bachelor of Education (BEd).

The teacher education regulator, the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) under the education ministry, has notified the four-year Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP) under which a student will be able to pursue dual-major bachelor’s degrees offering BA-BEd, BSc-BEd or BCom-BEd.

The NCTE had in 2018 notified a similar regulation to roll out the ITEP but it had not been implemented. The regulation was later withdrawn pending the formulation of the National Education Policy (NEP).

“As per the NEP, 2020, teacher engagement from the year 2030 onwards will be only through ITEP. It will be offered in pilot mode initially in about 50 selected multidisciplinary institutions across the country,” said a media release from the education ministry.

According to the curriculum of the new course devised by the NCTE, a student will be able to pursue a specialised discipline such as history, mathematics, science, arts, economics or commerce along with BEd.

The NCTE, which gives approval to teacher-training colleges, allows courses like the two-year Diploma in Education (DEd) for Class XII pass-outs, two-year BEd for graduates and the two-year MEd for postgraduates.

“The existing courses will continue even though the ITEP will be launched. Over the years, the ITEP may become the dominant programme and the diploma courses may be discontinued,” an education ministry official said.

Some academics had earlier picked holes in the proposed ITEP courses. Prof. Poonam Batra, a former member of the NCTE, had told this newspaper in 2018 that the proposed BSc/BA-BEd programme was pedagogically unsound.

“The current model of training secondary and senior secondary teachers after graduation (BEd after BA/BSc) is critical to maintain rigour of disciplinary knowledge in sciences, social sciences and mathematics among schoolteachers. To reduce teacher training to a four-year model after higher secondary will most certainly dilute teachers’ disciplinary knowledge base, a challenge we are already facing in the light of diluting standards of higher education itself,” Batra had said.