Algoritmo acotado para la aplicación de reglas

The State has steadily lost its capacity to provide B.Ed. education. The present abysmally poor scenario is summed up in Table No. 9.1 (details given in Annexure III to this Chapter).

Table 9.1

Categories of NCTE-Recognised B.Ed. Colleges and Their Intake Capacity (May, 2007)

No. Category No. of

Institutions No. of NCTE-Approved Seats 1. Government 1 100 2. Private 9 1,250

3. University Constituent Colleges 7 1,110

TOTAL 17 2,460

Five out of six existing government B.Ed. colleges have failed to receive NCTE recognition so far. As a result, B.Ed. education in Bihar until recently was dominated by the private sector and it continues to be the senior player even today. Given its own poor track record in this field, the government could not help but be a silent spectator of the usual malpractices of the private B.Ed. colleges, some honorable exceptions notwithstanding. Had it not been for certain positive steps taken during the past 1-2 years, the recent rise in the capacity of the University Constituent Colleges would not have been possible. However, this increase is mainly due to the Nalanda Open University which recently received NCTE’s recognition for conducting a B.Ed. course for 500 students through the Distance Mode. We will revert shortly to the issue of the quality and relevance of a course provided in Distance Mode.

At secondary and senior secondary levels, the Commission has estimated the number of additional teachers that would be required as per its Norms and Standards in order to fulfil the objective of Universalisation of Secondary Education for the 14-16 year age group by the year 2014-15 and senior secondary education for 70% of the relevant age group of 16-18 years by the year 2016-17. Accordingly, the number of trained teachers required by the State is shown in Table 9.2.

Table 9.2

Estimates of the Gap Between State’s Present Capacity for B.Ed. Courses and Requirement of Trained Teachers at Secondary/Senior Secondary

Level by the Target Year of 2016-17

1. No. of Teachers in Position (May 2007) 31,500

2. No. of Teachers Required by Target Year (2016-17) 4,46.000

3. Gap to be Filled During the Next Eight Years 4,14,500

4. Required Capacity for B.Ed. Courses Per Year (Average) 46,050

This huge gap in State’s capacity to meet the requirement of trained teachers at the secondary and senior secondary level is an evidence of the cumulative neglect over several decades. Time has come to pay the price now. Any hesitation to move forward with a clear political vision will only add to the cumulative neglect.

What is to be done to meet this formidable challenge? Obviously, almost 19-fold increase in the capacity will not be a rational way forward because this increased capacity will go waste after reaching the steady state of growth in the number of schools following the target year of 2016-17 for meeting the requirement of senior secondary schools. From 2016-17 onwards, we will have to provide for a capacity to meet the attrition rate of about 3% per year due to retirement of teachers every year plus the teachers required for the additional schools to be opened due to increase in the 14-18 years age group population. A rough estimate of the requirement of new teachers from 2016-17 onwards gives us a figure of about 13,400 teachers per year required to fill the gap due to retirement plus about 8,600 teachers per year for the additional schools to be opened annually (i.e. approx. 430-450 new senior secondary schools per year). Thus, the required capacity for B.Ed. courses will have to be increased to prepare an additional number of about 22,000 teachers per year in the State. This calls for about a 9-fold increase in the capacity of the B.Ed. courses by the year 2016-17. Roughly speaking, this means that the number of NCTE-recognised B.Ed. Colleges in Bihar will have to be increased from the present 17 to 150-160. The Commission recommends the following strategy to meet the goal:

a) Increase the number of University Constituent B.Ed. Colleges from the

present 7 to a minimum of 40 i.e. 25% of the total requirement.

b) There are about 250 constituent colleges of the nine Universities in the

State providing general education. Of these, 40 colleges will need to be encouraged and supported to organize B.Ed. courses in order to meet about 25% of the total requirement.

c) Increase the number of private B.Ed. Colleges to about 80 i.e. 50% of

the total requirement. For this, a scheme may be prepared to achieve the objective in public-private mode.

The Commission is of the view that a minimum of 50% of the total requirement of B.Ed. courses must be met by the university sector. This should maintain the necessary pressure on the private B.Ed. Colleges to maintain their quality and to curb the usual malpractices they tend to fall in for making undue profits. Similarly, the scheme for public-private mode must be designed to ensure both the quality of teacher education and transparent functioning in the private sector. It is also necessary that all the B.Ed. colleges of the state have a centralized admission test with counseling for the candidates, to be conducted by a credible government agency. This combined strategy to promote B.Ed. programme in the university sector, on the one hand, and private sector through the public-private mode, on the other, is expected to generate healthy competition

between the two sectors for ensuring quality teachers for the secondary and senior secondary education in Bihar.

While the above strategy for increasing the capacity of the State for B.Ed. courses will meet the long-term challenge, there is an immediate crisis of shortage of trained teachers at this level that calls for a different strategy. It is reported by officials of the HRD Department that, in the ongoing exercise to recruit teachers through the Panchayat Raj Institutions, about 20% of the teachers recruited in secondary/senior secondary schools are without B.Ed. This number is expected to rise rapidly in the future rounds of recruitment as the available number of trained teachers would have been recruited in current exercise. As per one estimate, the proportion of untrained teachers at this level during the next round of recruitment beginning 2008-09, could be as high as 50% of the recruited teachers. This proportion is likely to rise to a level of above 80% of the teachers to be recruited from 2013-14 onwards when the emphasis on building new schools will necessarily shift from elementary stage to secondary stage.

Keeping this crisis in view, the HRD Department has already worked out a crisis-management measure by signing an MoU with IGNOU for conducting an on-service two-year long teacher education course in distance mode (effective duration: 140 days). The teacher will devote one day every week on average at the PSKs (old BRCs), with two- to three-week long programmes during school vacations, learning theory and will then return to her school. Presumably, the design of the course takes cue from the internship model wherein the teacher gets an opportunity to interweave her learning of educational theory with practice in the schools. However, as far as it is known, the course essentially boils down to a set of lectures, basically following the conventional B.Ed. curriculum. The internship model is unlikely to be the operating principle of the course design. There is yet another aspect of this kind of B.Ed. course that is to be kept in mind. This is the lack of a face-to-face approach in the distance mode B.Ed. where the interaction between faculty and the student-teacher is conspicuous by its absence. No educational theory or practice has so far provided a rational basis for discounting the criticality of face-to-face approach in building future teachers. One can, therefore, accept the distance mode B.Ed., at best, as a stop gap measure to meet the crisis created in the State by acts of both commission and omission. However, in the long term, the State would do well to rely upon face-to-face approach in planning B.Ed. courses.

Two more issues about the design of the B.Ed. course. First, as is well known, the basic framework of the B.Ed. courses in India is rooted in the British model developed in the 1890s. While the teacher education courses in U.K. have been entirely redesigned in keeping with evolving educational theory, the Indian B.Ed. courses have not changed much for more than a century. Further, the Common School System puts a fresh demand on the B.Ed. course from the standpoint of Universalisation of Secondary Education and providing education of high quality with equality and social justice. This is an entirely new agenda for teacher education. It is precisely in this context that the Universities in Bihar have

a decisive role to play in teacher education and research. We will elaborate on this in the next section.

Second, in view of the recommendation of the National Commission on Teachers (1983-85) endorsing the idea of a 4-year integrated course for secondary teachers, the Commission recommends that this idea may be extended to the preparation of elementary teachers as well. In 1994, the University of Delhi (Department of Education) became the first university in the country to initiate a

4-year integrated course, called Bachelor of Elementary Education (B.El.Ed.)

after Plus Two as a pre-service programme for elementary teachers. Taking cue from the Education Commission’s view that the study of subjects needs to be integrated with the professional component, the B.El.Ed. course was instituted in the constituent colleges of the University – at present operating in six women’s colleges. The programme has an intense internship component of four months, as recommended by all the previous commissions and committees which deliberated on this subject. The graduates from this programme have been found to be immensely suited for teaching at elementary level in an integrated framework (i.e. Class I-VIII) and are being recruited in both the government and non-government school systems. For those who wish to study further, the university has recognized the B.El.Ed. degree as being equivalent to both B.Ed. and B.A., thereby enabling the graduates to take admission either in an M.Ed. course or a post-graduate course in social science. A B.El.Ed. graduate with a M.Ed. degree is fully equipped to become a teacher educator in an elementary teacher education institution like DIET or even join the faculty of SCERT. We, therefore, recommend that a programme on the lines of B.El.Ed. may be started in the University Departments of Education in Bihar as urgently as possible in order to prepare not just elementary teachers but, more importantly, teacher educators, curriculum developers and educational researchers for DIETs and SCERT.

G. Role of Universities in Teacher Education and Educational Planning and