Council works on India’s future educational needs

“A manpower demand and supply assessment of sort has been started by NCTE to study the needs of the Indian education system. Once completed, the study will be able to tell us just how many teachers are required for our future needs as well,” said a senior official from the HRD ministry.

That apart, NCTE will also be “mapping” the existing teacher training institutes in the country. “NCTE will map various teacher training institutes in the country to understand how they are spreading out and if there is need for a review of the way they are coming up. At present, most teacher training institutes are coming up in the southern part of India.

However, large swathes across central, northern and northeastern India have a far smaller representation of teacher training institutes. Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and the North-East, particularly Assam, have very few of these institutions which are crucial for giving education to all. Minority areas also show less number of such institutes. All this will be seen and understood more clearly once the studies are done,” added the official.

The quality of training being imparted to teachers is under the scanner with the Planning Commission recently having asked the National Council of Education Research & Training (NCERT) to evaluate the teacher training institutes in the country before and after funds are allocated to them under the 11th Plan. Over Rs 4,000 crore are lined up for allocation towards teacher education under the 11th Plan.

The need for an assessment prior to allocation of funds is being felt because the Plan Panel was not very pleased with the performance of teacher education programmes under...