DU's Academic Council passes resolution on teacher-student ratio

NEW DELHI: Delhi University's Academic Council on Tuesday passed the controversial resolution seeking to raise the number of students in a class, with six members dissenting against it saying the move to increase student-teacher ratio will impact the quality of education.

The DU has fixed 60 students per batch for lectures, 30 for tutorials and 25 for practical classes in undergraduate programmes. For postgraduate courses, the numbers per batch are 50, 25 and 15-20, respectively. The university issued a notification to colleges on November 11 in this regard.

"The Academic Council accorded its approval regarding uniformity in teacher-students ratio in all the programmes and courses being offered by the university and its colleges, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels vide the notification," a university official said. Several teachers' bodies have opposed the notification for what they called bigger-than-ideal batch sizes. The Academic Council met on Tuesday to discuss a slew of issues.

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The dissenting members have highlighted that the imposition of the notification issued on November 11 will have grave adverse consequences for the quality of the teaching-learning process in college and university departments. In the notification, Registrar Vikas Gupta has said the university came up with the rule to observe uniformity in the teacher-students ratio across all the programmes it offers. Among the six council members who opposed the resolution are Rajesh Kumar, Biswajit Mohanty, Mithuraj Shusiya, Sudhanshu Kumar and Nidhi Kapoor.

The dissenting members said that the raising of the tutorial group size to 30 students for UG courses and 25 for PG courses "negates" the very idea of small group interaction and denies students the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding and clarify niggling doubts. "Teachers too cannot do justice and the consequent quality deterioration would be enormous. Similarly, increasing the size of practical to 25 students and 15-20 students in cases of UG courses and PG courses, respectively is academically unacceptable," the members said in a dissent note.

The members said that uniformity in the teacher-student ratio cannot be a target and that reducing the ratio should be the target. "Increasing students-teacher ratio to achieve uniformity does not appear to be compatible with academic concerns," the note read. "No power, specified in the Statutes and Ordinances or otherwise, ought to be exercised in academic matters to nullify the decisions and wisdom of the Academic Council as is the case with this notification," it added.