An alumna of Delhi and Leicester (UK) universities, Maya Menon is the celebrated founder-director of The Teacher Foundation (estb.2002), a highly respected Bangalore-based teacher development organisation. Are you satisfied with NEP 2020’s proposals for revamping teacher education? Far from being satisfied, I am sceptical about how the proposed reforms will translate into norms and practice in the next three, five, even ten years. The teacher education reforms proposed by the NEP 2020 reads like a laundry list of ‘good-to-have’ items. What’s your comment on the proposed four-year integrated B.Ed degree programme? Should the policy have also provided for lateral entry from other professions? There is provision in NEP 2020 for shorter-term teacher training programmes. Graduates with a three-year undergrad degree have the option to complete a two-year B.Ed programme and graduates with a four-year undergrad degree can enroll for a one-year course. I believe this will enable more people, especially mature students, to make lateral entry into the teaching profession. However, I would have liked more flexibility through the development of high quality ‘teaching schools’ in every district and administrative block, which would work in close conjunction with higher education institutions (HEIs) offering B.Ed courses. This would allow aspiring teachers to practice their craft as trainees while studying for their B.Ed degree in HEIs on weekends, or during vacations or online mode. We need to devise multiple routes to teacher certification without diluting quality. Should the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) be made more stringent? The current national TET pass rate is an abysmal 10 percent… One positive recommendation in NEP 2020 is mandating TET for all teachers — foundational, preparatory, middle and secondary. Besides, now TET will have to be cleared by all teachers of government and private schools. However, there is no mention of improving or recasting TET to make it a more reliable indicator of teacher competence. The current abysmally low pass rate is not only because of the questionable quality of teachers, but also because it’s an imperfect test. This issue hasn’t been addressed in NEP 2020. Is there a case for reducing teachers’ non-teaching workload? This has been proposed earlier but without success… The NEP document says: “To prevent the large amounts of time spent currently by teachers on non-teaching activities, teachers will not be engaged any longer in work that is not directly related to teaching; in particular, teachers will not be involved in strenuous administrative tasks and more than a rationalized minimum time for mid-day meal-related work, so they may fully concentrate on their teaching-learning duties.” However, I have grave doubts whether this aspiration of NEP 2020 will be realised or whether there is any real intention to do so. As we speak, thousands of government school teachers are on Covid-19 duties. Instead, they could have been engaged to plan meaningful online and remote classes for children. The NEP mandates continuous professional development (CPD) of 50 hours per year for all in-service teachers… In principle, this is a great idea. But in a nation…
