The national council for teacher education (NCTE), responsible for the regulation and proper maintenance of norms and standards in the teacher education system, is now planning to develop a regular mechanism to monitor all private institutions.

The council has been regularly receiving complaints regarding infrastructure, qualification of faculty and charging of excess fee.

Section 3 of the NCTE Act allows the council to inspect the institutions, but not all institutions are covered so far. The institutions are checked only on random selection or based on court orders and thus the process is not completely institutionalised, says R Jaya, member secretary of NCTE.

“We know that there are problems with the quality of the private teacher education institutions and on the recognition norms followed by them. But the fact is there is no mechanism to monitor these institutions,” she says.

There are more than 12,800 private institutions across the country, offering various courses of teacher training.

“We have a peculiar situation. We cannot conduct enquiries and actual action has to be taken by some other agency. But these institutions should adhere to the norms,” she says.

The council has proposed the mandatory and periodic inspection of private teacher education institutions. It will be monitoring-based mechanism that will keep a check on institutions to ensure they adhere to recognition norms and there will also be parameters to check the quality of education given to student-teachers. This process will also involve students’ assessment.

“Students assessment will be done to check what they are actually learning and whether they are being absorbed in the market or not. This will give the qualitative idea of the institute,” R Jaya adds.

Based on this, the council will come up with an annual report that will highlight issues related to quality in these institutions.

Though the private institutes are certified by National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), but once they get the certificate there is no check on how they perform later.

“Accreditation and assessment is not necessary yet. But we want to make it mandatory through the proposed mechanism,” she said.

In 2002-03 there was sudden spurt in the number of private institutions offering teacher education courses and enrolment of students. From 2002 to 2008 there has been a constant growth in the number of institutions and their enrolments. That’s mainly because there was an increase in demand of teachers. But not much has been done to keep a check on the quality of education given to student-teachers in such institutions.

In an effort to maintain and upgrade the educational standards, NCTE in 2008, started policy of banning the applications seeking permission for the opening of any private B.Ed institution. NCTE took this step to stop mushrooming of teacher education institutions in the country.

In 2009-10, the council even conducted a demand supply survey to find out the actual teachers requirement in every state till 2015.

Of late, many states have even stopped conducting entrance examinations for admission in private colleges as there were not enough students to fill seats in the private institutions. Haryana and Punjab are among such states. Uttar Pradesh, North Eastern states and Bihar are not proactive in opening private institutes.

NCTE is also in the process of evaluation of teachers eligibility test (TET). The council has called for information from states on many issues like the kind of result in various categories etc to evaluate it.