ITEP set for exponential growth as 1,400 institutes seek to launch new four-year teacher training course

NEW DELHI: Over the next few years, the number of institutions offering the new Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP) is expected to grow exponentially. Around 1,400 institutions have either sought permission to launch the four-year teacher training degree course or to convert existing offerings into it.

As part of the clutch of reforms ushered in by the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the teacher education programmes at higher education institutions were set for sea change.

The key reform meant to initiate this change was the introduction of the four-year ITEP. Two years after launch, it is still limited to just 64 institutions. Faculty crunch, requirement of immense co-ordination and a calendar at odds with that of other programmes due to delayed admissions have plagued the course where it is run.

That said, students appreciate the opportunity of a dual degree. A BA.BEd, BSc.BEd or BCom.BEd, as these programmes are called, can be obtained in four years – a major in a specific discipline plus an education degree. Before this, a BEd took five years – three years of an undergraduate degree followed by two years of BEd.

ITEP origins

ITEP was launched as a pilot in 42 institutions in the 2023-24 academic session. It became the first teacher education programme in elite technical colleges such as the Indian Institutes of Technology and National Institutes of Technology. Now, 19 central universities, 21 state universities, seven NITs, three IITs and 14 colleges offer the ITEP.

Admission is through the National Common Entrance Test (NCET) conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA).

Since the ITEP curriculum is aligned with the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE), each institution chose a stage of education to prepare teachers for. As per the new school structure in which the pre-school and school years are divided into four segments (5+3+3+4), the stages are foundational, preparatory, middle and secondary.

ITEP: Stages and specialisation

Over half the ITEP programmes are BA.BEd; at 12% the BCom.BEd is the smallest part. A faculty in a state university said that institutions offering the BCom BEd combo struggled to fill seats.

The IITs and NITs have mostly opted for BSc BEd. The Regional Institutes of Education (RIE) under the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) have been running the four-year BSc/BA BEd programme for over four decades.

As for stages to specialise in, most picked the secondary stage (Classes 9 to 12), followed by preparatory (Classes 3 to 5), middle (Classes 6 to 8) and foundational (pre-school till Class 2)

As the regulatory body, National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) scans applications for the third and fourth phases, it will examine the distribution of stages and specialisation. The third phase of application was for institutions wanting to launch the course and the fourth for existing institutions transitioning into ITEP.

“In the third phase we have received over 750 applications and in the fourth phase as well the number is similar. The process will be completed soon,” NCTE chairperson Pankaj Arora told Careers360. Since 2022, NCTE has conducted only online inspection of institutions seeking approval for ITEP.

Open to men in DU

The applicants include seven Delhi University colleges that have the Department of Education.

Three others – Mata Sundri College for Women, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee College for Women and Jesus and Mary College – were part of the pilot phase. These three offer ITEP and the Bachelor of Elementary Education (BElEd).

“In DU, only the women’s colleges offer the education programme. But for ITEP, even Hansraj College has applied. This will enhance the opportunity for male applicants in ITEP programme, apart from Central Institute for Education (CIE),” said Arora. He comes from DU’s CIE.

The ITEP has been embraced most readily in north India with 39% institutions located in it; 22% are in the west; 20% in the south and 19% in the east. Of the 13 colleges offering the course, five are in Assam and Meghalaya.

ITEP: New specialisations

There are new specialisations in the offing. The NCTE has drafted curricula for education programmes in yoga, art, physical education and Sanskrit. The last is an ‘experiment’ at this stage; if it is received well, similar courses could be developed in other scheduled languages as well.

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“The thrust of NEP is on multilingualism and ITEP has implemented it in spirit,” said Arora.

Two years of ITEP

In its first two years, the ITEP has seen its share of teething problems and the NCTE has a committee to address these.

In DU colleges, BElEd teachers are overloaded as new positions have not been sanctioned for ITEP.

Radhika Menon, associate professor at Mata Sundri College, said, “Across DU the problem is that the same faculty teaching BElEd is teaching ITEP. We have not got separate faculty. Ideally, it should have been separate and posts should have been sanctioned.”

Poonam Batra, retired professor from CIE, added, “ITEP is a four-year programme. How do you expect a college which is already running a four-year programme, the BElEd, to run another four-year programme without new faculty? NEP is insistent on a single model for the entire country arguing that it will be more professional but without giving faculty.”

“Secondly, for a country as diverse as ours, a single model of teacher education disregards the specific needs and concerns of diverse states and different levels of education,” added Batra.

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As admissions for the course were delayed, the same teachers have ended up sacrificing their holidays.

Jasmeet Kaur, assistant professor at the same college, explained: “The teething problem was the variable academic calendar. What happened was there was no break for us, we had classes in summer break also. In the 2024-25 session, too, there is an overlap of three weeks.”

For the ‘major’ discipline – BA, BCom or BSc – part of the integrated programme, the ITEP students attend classes with those pursuing standard undergraduate degrees in those disciplines.

Eisha, an ITEP student in DU said, “Since I am in the first year, there is a foundation paper on evolution of education and then the interdisciplinary courses. I have chosen history as my major and political science as my minor. We can even choose Hons in one subject. Right now it is like other BA courses only. I am looking forward to the other semesters.”

However, in the case of BR Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD), a state university, faculty from other departments have to travel to the Lodhi Road campus in central Delhi to teach.

“A large pool of faculty is required. At AUD, we have sanctioned strength for this programme and have hired eight teachers but that is also not enough. It is a lot of work on co-ordination. We are taking guest faculty as well,” said Sunita Singh, dean, Faculty of Education, AUD.

AUD’s education programme addresses the preparatory and secondary stages. The university already had a School of Education Studies offering MA in Education, MA in Early Childhood Care and Education and PhD.

“Since we are primarily a liberal arts university, we have chosen the school subjects. We are designing the courses, we are also taking into account the strategies which are important for education,” explained Singh.

Vandana Saxena, who chairs NCTE’s troubleshooting panel, said the challenges are of two types, organisational and planning.

“The programme is founded to actualise the vision of NEP 2020. It is a dual degree programme conceptualised to be run in multidisciplinary HEIs. Many institutions are still under transition and need more time for creating university structures wherein such a dual degree programme with one professional and other liberal component can run,” said Saxena.

IITs and NITs have struggled to find teachers for pedagogy.

“IIT and NIT which have taken up the course, are working towards establishing a Department of Education as required by the norms and standards for the programme. It is an evolving process for these institutions.,” she added. Saxena is a senior faculty at DU’s CIE.

“The standalone teacher training institutions now have the additional challenge of converting to a multidisciplinary institution which may be done through the cluster college model or any other option as provided by the UGC since ITEP can run only in multidisciplinary institutions,” she said.

ITEP curriculum: Tweaks

Each institution offering the ITEP has built upon a ‘model curriculum’ supplied by the NCTE. “We spent a lot of time developing the course. As we have the secondary stage, the curriculum is focused on adolescent learners, with aspects of self exploration,” said Singh.

ITEP is a 160-credit course, with 20 credits assigned to each semester.

The curriculum includes common courses such as “Foundation of Education”, “Evolution of Indian Education” and "Philosophical and Sociological Perspective of Education”. The stage-specific curriculum is covered in semesters four to six.

Batra finds this problematic. She explained, “There are common courses across all levels – but, in fact, the common courses should also vary according to the level of teaching. Foundational courses such as the Psychology of Education and Sociology of Education need to be adapted to suit the level at which school teachers are being prepared for. In ITEP there is no distinction in the common foundational courses for preparing teachers at different levels of school education.In this sense, it is no different from the one-year BEd which the Justice Verma Commission on Teacher Education sought to change via its recommendations made in 2012.”

NCTE will launch a one-year BEd and MEd from 2026-27.

Batra also argued that the reforms have in fact set the curriculum and the teacher preparation approach back by several decades.

“ITEP courses are structured with the old colonial frame wherein foundations discipline like psychology, sociology and philosophy of education are taught in silos. It is not in any way integrated, as the title suggests. Integration needs to be done at various levels, including interdisciplinarity, which means drawing on other social science disciplines. It is critical for teachers to be prepared for diverse classrooms. For this, developing teachers need to engage with the social, cultural and economic context of the country, drawing upon disciplines of sociology, history, economics, geography and political science, which we have successfully acheived in BElEd.” she added.

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There are also concerns that ITEP has reduced the practical component.

In the case of ITEP, school experience begins in the fifth semester (third year of the programme) with a two-credit pre-internship practice, followed by school observation in semester-six carrying the same number of credits. Semester-seven has the school internship and school-based research project of 12 credits. The school experience, in total, carries 20 credits.

There are 2 credits for community engagement and service.

Arora remarked, “The effort of NCTE is to ensure parity across all the programmes. Even in one-year-BEd there is a component of 20 credits of hands-on experience. An eight-member committee has been constituted to ensure parity. I would also like to add that ITEP has 64 credits as liberal components and 96 credits for pedagogy.”