| Monday, July 14, 2008
For ensuring quality in colleges of education
Over the recent years, the increase in the number of colleges
of education has been phenomenal in the southern States, particularly
in Tamil Nadu.
With the credibility of the National Council for Teacher Education
(NCTE) being a corollary to the quality of delivery system in
the colleges, there is a need for a new dimension warranting
procedural transparency in approving colleges of education in
strict adherence to norms.
The `queue system' introduced by the NCTE to process applications
for new colleges strictly in accordance with seniority addresses
the issue.
By making the details of the dates of application and inspections
available in the website and enforcing transparency, NCTE is
eager to encourage serious applicants to start colleges of education,
says C. Thangamuthu, former vice-chancellor of Bharathidasan
University, who recently took over as the chairman of the Southern
Regional Centre of NCTE, Bangalore.
Adopting the system in engineering colleges governed by the
All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), the NCTE intends
to make it mandatory for all Colleges of Education to maintain
individual websites with particulars of all faculty members
on roll.
The transparent exercise would make colleges more serious about
having quality faculty and most of all weed out the scope for
impersonation.
Alongside being a regulatory body, NCTE would accelerate its
proactive and supportive role in infusing quality into teacher
education through `Lead Faculty Scheme' wherein senior faculty
of eminence whom individual colleges cannot employ would be
enrolled by the NCTE for orienting inexperienced faculty in
colleges. NCTE would sponsor the training programme.
Such senior faculty would also handle classes for students on
inter-collegiate cluster basis, Prof. Thangamuthu told Education
Plus.
Research is a vital area colleges would be guided to focus on.
The duration of regular B.Ed and M.Ed programmes being short,
the research focus is inadequate. NCTE has the resources to
fund minor projects, Prof. Thangamuthu said, adding that the
infrastructure of Academic Staff Colleges in various universities
would be utilised to conduct week-long programmes to train teachers
in e-content preparation, application of educational technology
tools and integrating Information and Communication Technology
into teaching.
Colleges which start functioning from temporary buildings must
necessarily develop permanent infrastructure within three years.
NCTE will coordinate with affiliating universities to ensure
that there is no further grace period, said Prof. Thangamuthu.
Courtesy: The Hindu - Education Plus
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