India. Ed System, Teacher Ed, And Ed Tech

8/8/2019 India. Ed System, Teacher Ed, And Ed Tech

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India:

EducationalSystem, TeacherEducation, &

EducationalTechnology


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EducationalSystem

School System

Governing Bodies for Education

National Examination Boards

Demographics of Schools

School Curricula

Typical School Schedule

Tiers of Schools

School Access and Quality

Government and NGO Education Initiatives

Decentralizing Reform

Financing

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School System: following the British structure.

o Kindergarten(Note: Often kindergarten is an integral part of regular schools,

though sometimes they are independent units and are often part of a larger chain):

Special toddler/nursery group: age 2 (run as part of the kindergarten)

lower kindergarten: ages 3-4

upper kindergarten: ages 5-6

o Primary school: grades 1-5 (ages 6-11): Compulsory.

o Middle school: grades 6-8 (ages 11-14): Compulsory.

(Note: The Indian Constitution made a commitment to make primary and middle

grade education free and universal by 1960, but even today the goal has not been

attained for a lack of efficient and effective allocation of resources).

o Secondary school: grades 9-12 (ages 14-17).

(Note: Students take two public exams at the end of grades 10 and 12: the Secondary

School Certificate Examinations, the Higher Secondary Certificate Examinations.)

Most exit school after grade 10 (approx. age 15).

Upper secondary education: Conducted in schools or 2-year junior

colleges. Based on performance on the 10th grade subject exams, students

enter an upper-secondary stream for their last two years of schooling beforeuniversity (grades 11-12).

The science stream is the most prestigious (highest cut-off score on

the grade 10 exams).

The second is commerce.

The third is humanities (arts).

Vocational and technical education: Also an option in higher

secondary schools, for gaining broad knowledge about occupations(not training in specialized subjects). Less than 3% of upper secondary

students choose this stream, because there is a lack of industry-school

linkage and the system has not convinced students that it can preparethem for real jobs and careers. Reform is going on to involve the

private sector.

(Note:Education for grades 9 and above continues to be free. However,

private schools receive no government aid and rely on student fees .)

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o Higher education: (centralized, overregulated, politicized)

Enrolment: more than 10 million students

No. of institutions: 18,000 (By 2006, 348 universities and 17,625 colleges)

As of 2002-2003, there were 196 universities, 76 Deemed Universities, 5institutions established through State and Central legislation, 11 institutes of

national importance established through Central legislation, and nearly 13,150

colleges including 1,600 women colleges. By the end of 2005, there were 93

deemed universities.

University-level post-secondary education (see the Table below):

Non-university level post-secondary education: Industrial traininginstitutes and polytechnics (administered through the State departments of

technical education) offers non-university level education in various technical

and commercial fields.

University Type Established by Important Features

Conventional Central/State

governments

Nearly 50% of universities in India belong to

this category.

Professional State governments Specialized instruction and research on

campus. Professional areas like

engineering, medicine, law covered.

Deemed Central government

Private/Joint sector(UGC approved)

(Note: UGC is in chargeof the development of

higher ed in India)

University status awarded to institutions of

long standing and high academic reputation.Typically encompasses both teaching and

research, with close interactions between the

two. Private deemed universities are mostlyrun by powerful families.

Other Central government Highly selective institutions offering

professional teaching/research,

including the crown jewels of the

system: Indian Institutes of

Technology, Indian Institutes of

Management, National Institutes of

Technology, Law Institutes

Other Central government Private institutions

Open Central/State

governments

Open and flexible education offered through

the distance mode using

correspondence courses/modern

educational technology like interactive

TV; wife varieties of programs

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Reform of the university system is anticipating unprecedented growth in undergraduate

and graduate education as well as research in the university system.

Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (2006) recommended

the following changes for higher education:

1) Private sector entry must be facilitated.2) A uniform ratings and accreditation system is needed.

3) Institutions should have autonomy in administration and curriculum design

4) Foreign Direct Investment in higher education must be liberalized.

5) The country must become a global education service provider.

6) Fee structure must be rationalized on the basis of user charges.

7) A vibrant credit market for financing higher education must be developed.

8) World class institutes must be developed through greater public investment.

9) Admissions should be through national level entrance exams.

10) Faculty conditions must be upgraded.

Governing Bodies for Education

Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD)

o Department of Education: (3 divisions: Secondary & Higher Education;

Elementary Education & Literacy; Women & Child Development)

-- coordinates planning with the States, provides funding for experimental

programs, and acts through

National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT):

provides support and technical assistance to a number ofschools and

oversees many aspects of enforcement of education policies

University Grants Commission (UGC): provides financial assistance to all

Central, State and Deemed Universities

National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS): uses new technologies to

meet the educational needs of the children out of school, school drop-outs

and socially and economical backward section of the learner population.

Open schools have been set up to offer both junior and seniorsecondary

education to adolescents for whom there are no conventional schoolplaces, to out-of-school young people and to adults. These open schools

have been successful in both bringing down the costs of education and

educating out-of-school youths as well as adult learners.

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National Examination Boards

o Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)

o Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE)

o National Open School (NOS) for distance education

(Note: The academic content and marks awarded by the CBSE and CISBE are broadlyequivalent except for English. CBSEfunctional English and no literature. CISBE--

Shakespeare and other classics as well as contemporary literature)

Demographics of Schools

School Type No. of Schools Serving Student

Population

Average Teacher-

Student Ratio

primary 600,000 115 million 1:43

upper primary more than 2 million 45 million 1:38

secondary and senior

secondary

more than 100,000 30 million 1:34

School Curricula:

National curricula(grades 1-10)

(Note: States determine the curriculum used in schools, though)

Primary stage (5 years) Grades 1 & 2

1. One languagethe mother tongue/the regional language2. Mathematics

3. Art of healthy and productive livingGrades 3-5

1. One languagethe mother tongue/the regional language2. Mathematics

3. Environmental studies

4. Art of healthy and productive living

Upper primary/Middle

stage (3 years)

1. Three languagesthe mother tongue/the regional language,

Hindi and English2. Mathematics

3. Science and technology

4. Social sciences

5. Work education6. Art Education (fine arts: Visual and performing)

7. Health and physical education

Secondary stage (2

years)

Grades 9 & 10

1. Three languagesthe mother tongue/the regional language,

Hindi and English (Some schools offer other languages aselectives)

2. Mathematics

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3. Science and technology4. Social sciences

5. Work education or Pre-vocational education

6. Art education (fine arts: visual and performing)7. Physical and health education

1. Curricula for upper secondary education (grades 11-12)

Determined by State or Central Boards of Secondary Education

(Note:India has 15 main languages, 10 different recognized scripts, and about 1650 dialects .)

Typical School Schedule

Typically, one day has 9 periods, 40 minutes each period. An example (instructional time per

weekfor grade 10):

Language I 280 minutes

Language II 240 minutes

Mathematics 280 minutesScience and technology 360 minutes

Social science 360 minutes

Work education or pre-vocational education 120 minutes (plus time outside school)

Art education 80 minutes

Physical and health education 80 minutes

III. Tiers of Schools (Note: Such segregation was condemned by the 1964 Kothari

Commission Report, but there has been little change)

Government schools Serving 90% of the 115 million childrenwho enroll in primary school

Ill-maintained government schools, many

functioning out of a canvas tent.

Quality of education usually quite poor.

Government-aided, privately-run schools

(private aided)

Serving children from fast increasing

middle class families

run by private management but funded

largely by government grants-in-aid and

similar to government schools in manyrespects.

Private schools

(Private unaided)

Governmentrecognized

Serving the elite upper-grade population(boasting air conditioning and riding

lessons)

genuinely private schoolrun entirely on

fee revenues with no state involvement(Note: inconsistency in the conditions for

recognition; more than 50% of all private

Unrecognized

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primary schools are unrecognized; school

and parents do not take government

recognition as a stamp of quality)

(Note: Most private school and many government schools are affiliated with the Central

Board of Secondary Education (CBSE))

School Access and Quality

1. Primary and secondary enrolment rates

Of the 115 million out-of-school children, 35% (40 million) are in India.

There have been encouraging signs of increasing schooling participation at the

elementary and middle levels. However, secondary school participation at the is

lower than it was in the 1990s.

o Enrolment rates

Increasing elementary and middle school enrolment

Due to the government and NGO education initiatives (see

details in Section IX)

Increasing higher education enrolment

Due to the governments effort to create social mobility andequality of opportunity

Due to the great value of crown jewels to society: around

200,000 students take the stringent Indian Institutes ofTechnology (IIT) entrance exams for less than 3,000 seats.

In contrast, secondary school enrolment is lower than predicted, and

there is a sharp increase in the number of out-of-school students aged15-16. (Note: There is great inter-state variation in access to

secondary schooling and gender disparity in secondary schoolenrollment)

This is puzzling given that several official statistics of the

education-wage relationship in India indicate that returns to

secondary and higher education are significantly greater than

primary and middle levels of education for both men and

women. Possible reasons:o Lack of supply of nearby secondary schools

o Parents perceived futility of educating girls and

concern for safety about girls going to distant secondary

schools

o Poor parents unable to fund education continuously for

10 years

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o In 2005, 66% of primary schools had water and 42% had functioning

toilets.

o Teacher efforts: There is clear evidence of teacher negligence in schools.

a. High teacher absence rates (25% in government primary schools, 2005)

b. Time and effort: generally reduced to a minimum

Even among teachers present, only about half were found engaged in

teaching. This pattern is not confined to a minority of irresponsible

teachersit has become a way of life in the profession.

6. Rapidly growing private schooling

o A recent phenomenon: Proliferation of low-cost private schools in both rural and

urban India.

o Located disproportionately in areas with poorly performing public schools

o Private-school students generally outperform public-school students in learning

achievement, after controlling for schools student intakes

o However, Mehrotra and Panchamukhi (2006) argued, based on purposive

sampling of 8 states, that the majority of private schools at the lower end of a

segmented private sector do not contribute to gender and social equity. Despitetheir better physical facilities their teachers are poorly paid and trained; and

although their outcome and process indicators are better than for government

schools, they remain unregulated and offer a poor alternative to low qualitygovernment schools.

o Disparity in statistics between the government released figures (only enumerating

recognized schools) and household survey data:

a. 15.4% of enrolled primary students were in private schools (2001);

b. 18.6% of all and 19.5% of school-going rural primary students (aged 7-

10) attended private schools (2006);

c. In urban India, recognized private schools share of total enrolment in

2002 was between 30 and 40% at different levels of education.

o Private schools are used by poor families too. Benefits for the poor:

a. Schools greateraccountability to parents leading to higher levels of

teacher commitment

b. Expanding the choices and access for the poor by attracting educational

entrepreneurs with profits.

c. Private schools offerEnglish as a subject earlier than governmentschools.

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Percentages of enrolled children living below the poverty line attending

private schools, based on a national survey (2000)::

ages 5-10: 14.8% (8% rural, 36% urban)

ages 11-14: 13.8%

ages 15-17: 7%

Government and NGO Education Initiatives

1. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)Campaign for Universal Education

o Provides additional funding to states to enroll out-of-school children, to improve

school quality, and to reducing the disparities across regions, gender, social and

economic groupso Trend: the Planning Commissions decision to implement the new funding pattern

of 50:50 (against 75:25 so far) between the Centre and the states

2. District Primary Education Project (DPEP)

o Predecessor to SSA

o Two overarching aims:

Operationalize decentralized planning and management

Accelerate the pace of universalization of primary education

o Impacts greater for low-caste children and girls

3. Operation Blackboard (OB)

o Funded by the central government

o Provides all primary schools teaching-learning equipment such as blackboards,

maps, charts, teachers manuals, a small library, toys and gamesand some

equipment for work experience.

o Provides all primary schools with only one teacher a second teacher

4. Mid-day meal scheme (MDM)

o Funded by both the central and state governments

o By 2006, the MDM scheme was near universal in all states.

o Provides lunch for 120 million children in every government and government

assisted primary school for a minimum of 200 days

5. Para-teacher schemeso Para-teachers are low-cost contract teachers with educational qualification

requirements below those of government primary regular teachers

o Typically tenable for 10 months per year but annually renewable

o Since 2002, states can appoint contract teachers with central government grants

o Para-teachers salaries are one-fifth to one-half of government teacher salaries

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o Purposes:

1) To expand schooling in a low-cost way to small hamlets unserved by regular

government schools

2) To increase the number of instructors in single-teacher schools

3) To reduce high pupil-teacher ratios

o Highly controversial

6. Public-private partnership in education (PPP)

o Substantial partnerships at least at the secondary and higher levels of education

o It is the system of private aided schools.

o Such schools are more and more like government schools in terms of sources of

teacher salaries, teacher recruitment, student fees, and learning achievements.

o A new proposal: All private schools give 25% of their places to government-

funded students from disadvantaged homes.

7. NGO education work: Rapidly growing with numerous activities

o Contributing to grassroots education work

Delivering bridge courses that prepare drop-out children to re-join school

Arranging for street children to settle with foster parents and attend

schools

Organizing learning camps for girls and for working children

Providing an assistant teacher for remedial teaching of weak children ingovernment schools (the Balsakhi Program)

Introducing an attendance-contingent bonus as an incentive to improve

teacher attendance

o Contributing to advocacy for education at the macro level

Contributing to national educational debates

Helping to make education access and quality prominent public issues

Field experimenting educational interventions on a small scale to inform

education policy

Decentralizing Reformo India is governed as a federal system of 28 states and 7 Union Territories.

o Local self-government (Panchayati Raj) was enshrined in the constitution in 1950

and the constitution was amended in the 1990s to encourage further devolution.

o The constitutional mandate itself left considerable room for the state governments

to design their own functional mapping of local governance subject to the

availability of funds" and as they "deemed fit.

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o Distance of the primary school system from the peoplea consistent problem in

education

o Governance

o Curricula

o Teacher posting procedures

o Responsiveness to the considerable diversity of local linguistic and social

context

o The National Policy on Education (NPE) and its accompanying Program of

Action(1986, 1992) emphasized the importance of decentralization of planning in

education at all levels as well as of ensuring greater community participation

o The National Policy on Education (1986) envisaged establishment of the

District Board of Education (DBE) at the district level.

o However, limited forms of public consultations in planning and executing

educational reforms, which has in turn reinforced, rather than changed, the

prevailing planning and governance models in India.

Financing

o India had a much higher expenditure on higher education relative to primary

education. The benefit was that India established world-class institutions at the

higher level.

o Belatedly recognizing the importance of primary education, the government has

in recent years shifted the focus of its funding to primary and middle grades in an

attempt to boost overall literacy levels.

.

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ReferencesBanerjee, A., Cole, S., Duflo, E., & Linden, L. (2007). Remedying education: Evidence from two

randomized experiments in India. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1235-1264.

Cheney, G. R., Ruzzi, B. B., & Muralidharan (2005).A profile of the Indian education system. A

paper prepared for theNew Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce.

Washington DC: National Center on Education and the Economy. Retrieved from

http://www.skillscommission.org/pdf/Staff%20Papers/A%20Profile%20of%20the

%20Indian%20Education%20System.pdf

Kingdon, G. G. (2007). The progress of school education in India. Oxford Review of Economic

Policy, 23(2), 168-195.

Prakash, V. (2008, July).Directions in educational planning: Changing landscape of

educational planning in India. Paper presented at the Directions in Educational Planning:

Symposium to honor the Work of Franoise Caillods, National University of Educational

Planning & Administration, New Delhi, India.

Rajan, R. (2006). India: Past and its future.Asian Development Review, 23(2), 36-52.

Tooley, J. (2007). Could for-profit private education benefit the poor? Some a priori

considerations arising from case study research in India.Journal of Education Policy,

22(3), 321-342.

VijayRaghavan, K. (2008). Knowledge and human resources: Educational policies, systems, and

institutions in a changing India. Technology in Society, 30, 275-278.

Primary EducationChin, A. (2005). Can redistributing teachers across schools raise educational attainment?

Evidence from Operation Blackboard in India.Journal of Development Economics,

7892), 384-405.

Govinda, R., & Bandyopadhyay, M. (2007).Access to elementary education in India: Country

analytical review. Falmer, Brighton, UK: Consortium for Research on Educational

Access, Transitions and Equity (CREATE).

Mehrotra, S. (2006). Reforming elementary education in India: A menu of options.International

Journal of Educational Development, 26, 261-277.

Mehrotra, S., Panchamukhi, P. P. (2006). Private provision of elementary education in India:

Findings of a survey in eight states. Compare, 36(4), 421-442.

Sankar, D. (2007). Financing elementary education in India through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan:

Challenges in recent times. A report by the World Bank.

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Sankar, D. (2008). What is the progress in elementary education participation in India during the

last two decades? An analysis using NSS Education rounds. A report by the World Bank.

Secondary Education

Rumble, G., & Koul, B. N. (2007). Open schooling for secondary & higher secondary education:

Costs and effectiveness in India and Namibia. Commonwealth of Learning.

Tilak, J. B. G. (2007). Post-elementary education, poverty and development in India.

International Journal of Educational Development, 27, 435-445.

Vocational Education

World Bank. (2008). Skill development in India: The vocational education and training system.

Higher Education

Agarwal, P. (2006). Toward excellence: Higher education in India. Indian Council for Research

on International Economic Relations. Retrieved fromhttp://cii.in/documents/HigherEd201107.pdf

Agarwal, P. (2007). Private Deemed Universities in India.International Higher Education, 49.

Retrieved from

http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number49/p15_Agarwal.htm

Kapur, D., & Mehta, P. B. (2007, July).Indian higher education reform: From half-based

socialism to half-baked capitalism. Paper prepared for presentation at the Brookings-

NCAER India Policy Forum, New Delhi, India.

Distance Education

Berman, S. D. (2008). ICT-based distance education in South Asia. The International Review of

Research in Open and Distance Learning, 9(3). Retrieved from

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/viewArticle/581/1104

Misra, P. K. (2006). E-strategies to support rural education in India.Educational Media

International, 43(2), 165-179.

Panda, S., & Chaudhary, S. (2001). Telelearning and telelearning centers in India. In

Telecentres: Case studies and key issues.

Rao, S. S. (2006). Distance education and the role of IT in India. The Electronic Library, 24(2),

225-236.

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I. Vital Statistics for Teacher Education (DoE, India, 2002)

Stage Male Female Total Trained Teachers

(%)

No. of teachers (in millions)

Primary 1.23 0.64 1.87 86

Middle (upper

primary)

0.77 0.44 1.21 87

Secondary 0.56 0.31 0.87 89

Higher secondary 0.43 0.22 0.65 90

Total 2.99 1.61 4.60 88

No. of schools (in millions)

Pre-primary 0.04

Primary 0.63

Middle (upper

primary)

0.20

High schools 0.08

Higher secondary 0.03

No. of teacher training institutions

Primary level 1283

Secondary level 848

No. of Depts of

Education

225

No. of teacher

educators

35,000

Enrolment in teacher training institutions (in millions)

Primary level 0.06 0.05 0.11

Secondary level 0.06 0.05 0.11

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II. Preservice Training of Teachers for Different Levels of

Education

India has one of the largest systems of teacher education in the world. Besides the university

departments of education and their affiliated colleges, government and government aided

institutions, private and self-financing colleges and open universities are also engaged in teacher

education.

Level of

Education

Type of Training Admission

Requirements

Duration of the

Course

Diploma /

Degree

Awarded

Pre-primary

education

Private unaided 12 years of

schooling

One to two years Certificate / Pre-

school in

education

Primary

education

Government

Private aided

Privateunaided

10/12 years of

schooling(Note:

Desired

qualifications

for admission is

senior secondary

(Arts, Science

and Commerce)

level).

One to two years

(Note: two years

became the national

norm with the

establishment of

District Institute of

Education and

Training (DIET)).

Certificate /

Diploma in

Elementary

Education

Secondary

education

Government

Private aided Private

unaided

Graduation One year

Two years(Note:In 1999

some institutionshave initiated a two-

year teacher

education programfor secondary

teachers based on

the recommendationsby National Council

for Teacher

Education (NCTE))

Bachelor of

Education

Four year

integrated

course

Government

aided

Years 4 years Bachelor of

Education

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For preparing teacher educators, the most popular program is M.Ed, though a few universities

provide M.A. (Education). The M.Ed. program by and large is of general nature and does not

train specialists in different areas.

Research is largely conducted for obtaining a degree and much of it is repetitive and incapable of

improving theory or practice of teacher education or general education.

III. Organizations/Structures/Tests Related to Teacher

Education

National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE):

Mission: To achieve planned and coordinated development of the teacher education system

throughout the country, the regulation and proper maintenance of Norms and Standards in theteacher education system and for matters connected therewith

o Headquarters: New Delhi

o It has 4 regional committees

500 District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs)

o 7 departments: Preservice Teacher Education; Work Experience; District Resource Unit;

In-service Programs, Field Interactions and Innovation Co-ordination; Curriculum,

Material Development and Evaluation; Educational Technology; Planning and

Management

o As part of decentralizing reform in response to the call by the National Policy on

Education (NPE) (1986, 1992)

o Promotes decentralization (the District Primary Education Program (DPEP))

o

Envisaged as resource institutions in elementary education at the district level,providing professional support, guidance, and training to elementary teachers in allaspects of school education

o Allows for in-service training (INSET) opportunities to become a routine part of the

professional life of state-employed teacher

Selected Secondary Teacher Education Institutes (STEIs)

o 87 Colleges of Teacher Education (CTEs)

Secondary teacher education

o 38 Institutes of Advanced Studies in Education (IASEs)

Provides professional guidance to colleges of education and teacher education

institutions at secondary stage

Conducts research and surveys, develop materials, and provides in-service education

to teachers and teacher education

Cluster Resource Centers

o Significantly contributing towards ending teachers isolation

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o Provide teachers with a platform for peer discussion of classroom processes

National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT)

o An apex national level organization to advise the government of India, other

national level organizations, and state governments in all matters of school education

o Entrusted with the evaluation of the Teacher Education Scheme upon the

recommendation of the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC)

o Responsibilities:

develop and renew school curricula

prepare exemplar textbooks and other reading materials

suggest changes in evaluation and assessment patterns

orient key persons and resource persons in various professional areas

conduct research studies and surveys in areas concerned with school education andteacher education

32 State Councils for Educational Research and Training (SCERTs)

o As part of decentralizing reform

o Looks after all aspects of universalization of elementary education as well as attempts to

transform secondary education to bring it in tune with the latest developments in

professionalism and in socio-cultural context

o In close collaboration with NCERT, provides training to teachers and teacher educators

to act as key persons drawn from all over the state and organizes and monitors in-service

training program of other teachers

o Becoming leading institutions capable of enhancing quality in school education

Academic Staff Colleges (ASC)

o Provides orientation and subject refresher courses for newly appointed college lecturers

o 3-4 week duration

o Aims:

understand the significance of education in general, and higher education in

particular, in the global and Indian contexts;

understand the linkages between education and economic and socio-economic and

cultural development with particular reference to the Indian polity where democracy,

secularism and social-equity are the basic tenets of society;

acquire and improve basic skills of teaching at the college/university level to achieve

the goals of higher education;

be aware of the latest developments in their specific subject;

understand the organization and management of college/university and to perceive the

role of teachers in total system;

utilize opportunities for development of personality, initiative and creativity

Eligibility Tests

o There is a National Eligibility Test to select teachers.

o Some states also conduct State Level Tests for appointment of teachers in their states.

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IV. Teacher Quality / Teaching Environment

o The teacher has been identified as the single most important factor influencing the

quality of education by the Indian Education Commission and the National Policy on

Education.

o Teaching is a well-paid profession in India.

o Teachers are appointed based on political affiliations, not on content or

pedagogical knowledge.

Teacher quality challenges:

1. Serious imbalance of availability of trained teachers in the country

Educated persons try to get posted in urban areas.

The northeastern region and several rural and tribal areas are facing acute

shortage of teachers. Whereas certain regions have excess of trained teachers.

2. Lack of female teachers at primary schools, affecting higher dropout rate of girls

3. Inadequately prepared for dealing with cultural and linguistic diversities of the Indiansociety

4. Teacher absence and inactivity (see teacher efforts in VIII-5 in Educational System)

5. Para-teachers (See also Para-teacher Scheme in IX-5 in Educational System)

Untrained young volunteers

Begin to work after a couple of weeks of induction training

The appointment of these contract teachers in the primary education sector at amass level raises serious question regarding the quality of primary education

The academic and professional qualifications for these teachers have been relaxed

and lowered as compared to those of regular teachers

These teachers are paid less.

6. Teacher-centered vs. student-centered pedagogy

Rote learning; the prevailing pedagogy makes no concession to the local linguistic

ecology.

In urban private schools, teachers increasingly use the Project method of teaching,

group work, and assessment on individual basis. Syllabus prescribed though.

7. Teacher accountability

The appointment of teachers, their transfers and other administrative affairs aredriven by political favors and financial transactions, which have an important

bearing on teacher performance, especially their accountability to parents.

In some states, teachers are the only government employees allowed to contestelections and become members of State legislative assemblies (MLA), as well as

Members of Parliament. A teacher who is elected as an MLA or an MP continues

to be a teacher, regardless of whether he or she teaches or not; in other words,such teachers continue to draw a full salary at government expense.

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8. Rural teachers thinking

Low sense of professional agency (Dyer et al., 2004)

o Using prescribed syllabus for teaching rural and tribal children

o Having to promoting students with the 70% attendance record and yet

lacking in competency

o Taking no risk trying out new activity or new teaching aid because of

some students disruptive leaving and returning for weeks or months

Attitudes and expectations (Dyer et al., 2004)

o Some teachers are oriented towards the administration rather than to

children, hence lack of intrinsic motivation

o Negative attitude toward students

o Negative attitude toward parents

Culture

Four cultural constructs underlie pedagogical practices in classrooms

o holism as a shared worldview that encourages openness to

regulation;

o hierarchical structure as a regulative social framework;

o knowledge as discovered and attested collectively;

o sense of duty that defines the role of the teacher (and student).

9. Teachers other time commitments affecting teaching:

The Indian state views teachers as government representatives rather than education

professionals. Teachers also have to engage in the following activities related socialdevelopment work:

Collecting decennial census returns

Advocacy for family planning

Staffing election booths

Running polio and other vaccination camps

Working for adult literacy

10. Teacher unions

In most States, the teachers are the single largest group within the civil service, so

their unions possess considerable political power at State level.

A teachers union membership strongly reduces pupil achievement, but unionmembership is substantially rewarded in terms of teacher pay (Kingdon, 2006,

2008)

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Teaching environment challenges:

1. High student-teacher ratio (see IV in Educational System)

2. Prevailing in rural primary schools is the situation where two sets of teachers appointedas regular and parateachers working in the same school and performing the sameduties, but are governed by different service conditions.

3. Rural schools are understaffed and barely have the most basic of facilities. In contrast,

urban private schools may have greater resources to set up modern classrooms and many

of them are progressing towards developing High-tech classrooms, complete withcomputer systems and modern teaching aids.

Government efforts to improve teacher quality

1. Raising preservice education requirements2. Improving teacher training3. Increasing the diversity of the teaching force4. Promoting stronger participation by local government and community organizations

Education Curriculum Frameworks

1. Cultural context: teacher education not comparable to engineering, medicine, and

management in terms of statusparents and the community do not give much credibility

to teacher training in schools.

2. Teacher educators often do not practice approaches, strategies, and methodologies in

their teaching of student teachers.

3. The entire curriculum is examination-oriented and total focus of training is on theory in

paper and not on practical aspects while practice teaching is relegated to a secondary

position and often gets ignored.

4. The Curriculum Framework for Quality Teacher Education (NCTE, 1998, 2005)

o 7 chapters: Introduction; Context, Concerns and Challenges of Teacher

Education; Pre-service Teacher Education; In-service Teacher Education;

Education of Teacher Educators; Management of Teacher Education; Research inTeacher Education

o Recognizes the plurality of the Indian society and the counter-productiveness of

imposing a uniform curriculum

o Identifies basic essentials, leaving the detailed development of specific curricula

to educators working in different areas and situationso Highlights the need on the part of teachers to understand the context of the Indian

situations at the national and regional levels

o Emphasizes the role of researches, particularly action research in teacher

education institutions and its organic relationships with schools

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5. Competency based and commitment oriented teacher education curriculum framework

(NCTE, 1998): stresses the development of teacher commitment as well as performance

o Commitment to the learner, to the society, to the profession, to excellence, to

basic human values

o Performance: classroom performance; school level performance; performance in

and out of school educational activities, parent related performance; communityrelated performance

6. Guidelines for teacher education programs in response to the National CurriculumFramework for School Education (NCERT, 2000)

o preparing teachers to integrate indigenous knowledge in theory and practice

o developing an understanding of the impact of globalization, privatization and

information and communication technology

o fostering among teachers as well as in the students the interest for lifelong

learning

o empowering teachers to inculcate at every stage values among students

o

enabling teachers to establish linkages with parents and the communityo developing among teachers the competencies to deal with differently abled

students

o orienting teachers in modern techniques of evaluation, etc.

7. Information technology curriculum for teachers

o According to Thomas and Knezek (2008), India is making use of the NETS-T

(US ISTE standards) as they prepare their teachers to meet international

standards.

o In 1991, NCERT developed a Secondary Teacher Education Curriculum, which

contains an information technology curriculum for training aspiring school

teachers (see details at http://www.ciet.nic.in/etissues.html)

of Teacher Education

1. Teacher education programs have not attained the goal of producing a largenumber of trained and qualified teachers who could commit themselves to serve around

the country.

2. The implementation of teacher education curricula has failed to deliver what they

promise regarding involvement of communities in school functioning.

3. Teacher educators still depend on age-old teaching strategies and methodologies.The prescribed curriculum is insensitive to cultural-specific pedagogy.

4. Teacher education reform is top down: Changes of curricula, usually initiated atthe central level followed by similar exercises at the state level, gets considerably diluted

when it reaches the classrooms in teacher education institutions. Teachers complain about

not being taken into confidence when policy is being formulated.

5. The continuity between initial and in-service training has not yet been achieved.

6. The system has not evolved to provide supportive professional feedback toteachers.

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7. Quality residential teacher education programs are very few. The last decades

have led to a visible decline in rigor, duration, and learning attainments in several teachereducation programs, particularly at the Bachelor of Education level.

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References

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Dyer, C., Choksi, A., Awasty, V. Iyer, U., Moyade, R., Nigam, N. et al. (2002). Democratizing

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Educational Technology

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Documents

India. Ed System, Teacher Ed, And Ed Tech