A Council at Delhi, Regional Committees that recognise colleges: the regulator of teacher training

Background

The National Council for Teacher Education Act of 1993 extends to the whole of India and set up the Council to achieve planned and co-ordinated development of teacher education and to keep norms and standards in it. A 2011 amendment added the qualifications of school teachers to that mandate and applied the Act to schools from the pre-primary stage to senior secondary, and to their teachers. The Council is a body corporate with its head office at Delhi, and it can open regional offices elsewhere with the previous approval of the Central Government. Its Chairperson, its Vice-Chairperson and its Member-Secretary are each appointed by the Central Government, and the Secretary of the central department dealing with education sits on it as an ex officio member. The Council lays down the least qualification a person needs to be employed as a teacher in a recognised institution, the norms for teacher education courses, the minimum eligibility for admission to them, their duration and content, and guidelines on the fees an institution can charge. Recognition of a teacher education institution is granted by the Regional Committee concerned, a committee of the Council, which must satisfy itself about finances, accommodation, library, qualified staff and laboratory. The same Regional Committee can withdraw recognition after giving the institution a reasonable opportunity to make a representation, such an order takes effect only from the end of the academic session following the day it is communicated, and an appeal against it lies to the Council. The Council has now constituted an expert committee, chaired by a former head of the Central Institute of Education at the University of Delhi, to revise the teacher eligibility test guidelines so that graduates of the four-year Integrated Teacher Education Programme can sit the central and State tests.