NCERT pushing for longer B Ed programme

ahmedabad: the national council for educational research and training (ncert) has started persuading universities across the country to make their bachelor of education degrees into two-year programmes instead of the present one-year course. as part of this effort, the council organised a one-day seminar at the gujarat vidhyapith on tuesday, with representatives from all seven universities in the state.speaking to reporters after the seminar, former director of unesco's international institute of education, dr ravindra dave, said at present only five institutions across the country have the elongated version of the programme on an experimental basis. one of which is the gujarat vidyapith. the other four are regional institutes of education at ajmer, bhopal, bhubaneshwar and mysore, each representing their own regions. "the current course does not even last for the full 12 months," dave, who has been working with the gujarat vidyapith on their programme, said. "if you deduct the vacation, there are only nine months of academic activity left. you then have to deduct the exams and the various holidays and you are left with barely five months of classroom activity. how do you expect a complete fresher with no previous classroom experience to become a sensitive professional teacher in such a short duration?" although the state government has shown interest in the two-year programme, only the m s university, vadodara has so far created a curriculum for it. the university, however, has not implemented it due to internal wrangling. ncert director dr j s rajput, who also attended the seminar said he was keen to see that more universities take on the new course and asked officials to arrange such seminars across the country. "universities need to be persuaded on this and it will take some time," he added. dave added that the number of literate persons in the country has leapfrogged in the last few years, making the role of better teachers even more crucial. "in fact, there has been a fundamental change in our education policy," he told reporters. "secondary education has become more important than primary education as a major chunk of our work force comes from the former. at present, of the 11 crore people in the country between the age group of 14 to 18, three receive secondary education. we plan to increase that to six crore by 2020. and if we want quality in these six crore, you will need quality teachers."