Visakhapatnam: Things have come full circle for teacher education in Andhra Pradesh from students opting for management quota seats paying lakhs of rupees five years ago to thousands of seats lying vacant now. Last year, about 50 per cent B.Ed seats had gone a begging.
The EdCET-2016 had drawn a paltry 11,700 applications and attendance of 9,561 candidates while there are about 40,000 seats in about 370 colleges across the state. About 25,000 students applied for EdCET-2015.
Educationalists estimate that about 80 per cent B.Ed seats would remain vacant this year. The same is the case with D.Ed course and there are no takers for many seats.
Only 72,126 attended the DEDCET-2016 against 1.3 lakh applications last year, but several aspirants failed make the cut of qualifying the exam. The observers attribute the downward trend to several factors right from increasing the B.Ed duration to two years and the norms making the B.Ed students ineligible for secondary grade teacher posts to no major government recruitments and the private schools not obliging the stipulated norms of recruiting trained teachers.
APEdCET-2016 convener, Prof T. Kumaraswamy, opined that the extension of B.Ed course duration to two years may have dipped down the demand. “This year, we received about 11,705 applications and about 9,560 turned up for the exam. But we cannot anticipate how many will finally join the course. The course has about 40,000 seats,” he added.
As per the statistics provided by Prof. Kumaraswamy, even if all qualify to join the course, there would be no takers for 30,000 seats. Last year, there were single-digit admissions and only a few elite colleges could get more students.
Principal of the Ushodaya College of Education in Vizag, S. Venkata Vasu said the future looks bleak for the teacher training institutions.
“The B.Ed and D.Ed courses, which enjoyed a great demand until the last few years, are now waiting for miracles to happen. Private schools should only recruit trained teachers, but they are eluding the norms. In Tamil Nadu, the PGTs teach up to Intermediate classes. Adopting those methods and making B.Ed students eligible for SGT posts can help revive the teacher education in AP” he added.
