Plan to lengthen B Ed, M Ed courses flayed
Ministry officials cited the lack of contact hours between pupil and faculty
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2014-09-19 05:18 GMT
Chennai: The Union HRD ministry has drawn flak from school teachers and teacher aspirants as it plans to enhance the duration of the B.Ed and M.Ed courses from one year to two. The HRD ministry had convened a meeting of stakeholders, including the vice-chancellors of state and deemed varsities, on September 15 in New Delhi to discuss reforms in teacher education where the proposal to increase the duration of the B.Ed and M.Ed courses was discussed.
Ministry officials cited the lack of contact hours between pupil and faculty and how its value was getting undermined in the overall scheme of things which was why they wanted to increase the duration of the teacher courses. “This decision will affect most of the serving teachers in schools who had done B.Ed and aspire to pursue an M.Ed.
So far school managements allowed us to take a year’s sabbatical to study for a master’s degree. Now if the HRD ministry is going to increase the duration to two years I don’t think managements will allow teachers to take a two-year sabbatical,” K. Sumathi, a science teacher in a private school here, said.
T. Saravanan, another teacher, lamented the fact that the proposal had come at a time when the number of people who pursued the teacher education programme had dropped as they had to take the Teacher Eligibility Test to become a teacher. “This is likely to further discourage the teacher aspirants,” he pointed out.