NEP will kill 19,000 BEd colleges: College association

NEW DELHI: An association of private teacher training colleges are getting ready to oppose the Central Government on the National Education Policy, still a draft.

The Association of NCTE-Approved Colleges Trust (ANACT) has argued that the draft NEP will prove fatal for private colleges and alleged that the government is trying to “kill small fish like them only to allow bigger players” in the teacher education sector. Teacher training is regulated by the National Council for Teacher Education. There are around 20,500 BEd colleges in the country of which 19,000 are private, according to the association.

The draft NEP recommends replacing all existing programmes with only a four-year Integrated Teacher Education Program (ITEP) course by 2030 and suggests that only integrated institutions be allowed to offer these courses. S.V. Arya, the association’s national president, said that as per the NCTE’s orders, colleges offering D.El.Ed (diploma in elementary education) and BEd (bachelor in education) courses cannot apply for ITEP courses. “This is a very strange situation,” he said.

The BJP government has been trying to regulate the sector, first by declaring a moratorium on permissions for new colleges in 2017 and then by demanding that all colleges submit details of their resources and infrastructure in affidavits. The government reportedly faced major resistance to these measures. The poor quality of teacher training – over 90 percent of the sector is in private hands – has been one of the major factors blamed for the learning deficit among school children. The NEP envisions a system where all sub-standard teacher education institutes are shut and teacher training is placed in large multidisciplinary universities and colleges. As per the draft, the four-year integrated BEd. the programme will be the minimum eligibility criteria for teachers

Arya told Careers360: “The draft New Education Policy clearly states that in the next 10 years all the existing BEd colleges will be closed down or they will have to be converted. A degree college is not possible as there the requirements are different. Our 20,500 are all approved by the government, what is the problem in allowing the exiting colleges to run the integrated programmes?” He pointed out that they have been offering teacher education for the past two decades.

The association is concerned that each college has put between Rs 20 crore and Rs 40 crore in building infrastructure and if the government forces them to close, will spell huge losses for the investors.

The association has demanded that the government should reconsider the policy for BEd college. Arya said: “If the government does not do this, then in the coming few years not only thousands of crores of rupees will be wasted but millions of people will also become unemployed.” The association is planning to meet the Union Minister for Human Resource Development as well as some of the members of Parliament to discuss this.

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