A newly announced integrated Bachelor in Education course has attracted criticism from academics for “imposing” a curriculum and relaxing the qualifications for faculty to teach the programme.

The teacher-education regulator, National Council for Teacher Education, notified the four-year Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP) in October last year. The new programme will from the 2023-24 academic session replace the existing four-year BA-BEd and BSc-BEd programmes, introduced in 2014.

However, the other teacher-education courses -- such as the two-year BEd, two-year MEd and diploma programmes – will continue. Currently, 772 institutions teach the four-year course.

Several academics criticised the ITEP on the following grounds:

Curriculum

The four-year BEd has two components: an undergraduate subject component (say, a BSc mathematics course) and a teaching methodology component involving lessons on how to teach the subject (mathematics in this instance) to schoolchildren.

So far, the NCTE allowed the universities to decide the syllabus for the undergraduate subject component and only provided broad guidelines on the curriculum for the teaching methodology component.

However, the NCTE’s latest regulations say it will develop a model curriculum for the ITEP.

According to the regulations, the teacher-training institutions must base their ITEP curricula on the model curriculum, with up to 30 per cent flexibility allowed.

“However, NCTE reserves the right to validate any modifications to the curriculum so adapted or modified at any stage, if felt necessary,” the regulations say.

A university teacher who wished to remain anonymous accused the ITEP of trying to “snatch the academic autonomy of universities by imposing a curriculum”. “The NCTE will have final right to alter the university syllabus. This is interference,” the teacher said.

Jitendra Sharma, former faculty member at a teacher-training college in Jodhpur, said: “The NCTE can lay down a broad curriculum but must avoid imposing syllabuses on universities.”

Same teacher

The new regulations say a teacher-training institute will recruit only one teacher per subject for up to 50 BEd students. The teacher will teach the undergraduate subject as well as the methodology of teaching the subject to schoolchildren.

“It will be practically impossible for a single teacher to teach, say, the undergraduate course of mathematics as well as the teaching methodology for mathematics,” the university teacher said.

“In institutions that now offer the four-year BEd, the regular subject teachers teach the undergraduate subject component of the teacher-training programme and the faculty of education handles the teaching methodology.”

Sharma said: “No teacher is versatile enough to teach all the papers in a major undergraduate subject as well as the teaching methodology for that subject. The class will be monotonous.”

Qualifications

Teacher-education faculty, including some from central universities like Banaras Hindu University, have written to the central government opposing the relaxed qualifications for those who will teach the ITEP.

Currently, a candidate needs an MEd and a master’s in the discipline subject to be recruited to teach the teaching methodology for that subject, said Sunil Singh, professor at the Facility of Education, BHU.

“Under the ITEP, this has been relaxed to BEd and a master’s in the discipline subject. This will enable people deficient in (their knowledge of) teacher training methodology and perspectives/ foundations of education to become teachers at (teacher-training) institutions,” Singh said.

The critics of the ITEP said the programme had been brought in without a nationwide consultation with practitioners of teacher education or research on the efficiency of the existing courses. They said they expected a dilution in the quality of teacher education.

Sharma criticised the four-year integrated BEd system itself, including the existing version, introduced in 2014.

He said the Justice J.S. Verma Commission had in 2012 recommended that BEd courses should be taught over two years after a graduation programme (that normally runs for three years).

However, the integrated programmes teach both undergraduate studies and teacher education in four years, causing a dilution in quality, Sharma said.

“This will not help produce quality teachers,” he said, adding that educationally advanced countries like Finland have five-year teacher-training courses.

An email sent to NCTE chairperson Dinesh Prasad Saklani on June 30 seeking his reactions to the criticism has so far brought no reply. An NCTE official, however, said the ITEP guidelines might be reviewed.