National Policy on Education (1986)
The number of school expanded drastically in 1980s which increased the demand for teachers on a large scale. But the quality and efficiency of the teacher education became the serious concern of the country. It failed to implement some of the remarkable recommendation made by the pervious commissions set for rewinding the education system. The curricula were not revised, most of the institutions’ infrastructural facilities were poor, and the quality of teachers was not up to the mark. In this regard, the Government of India introduced a new policy, the National Policy on Education in 1986 to reframe the educational system.
The policy expressed its serious concern regarding teacher education and teachers as ‘the status of teacher reflects the socio-cultural ethos of the society— it is said no people can rise above the level of its teachers. The government and the community should endeavour to create conditions which will help, motivate and inspire teachers on constructive and creative lines’. The policy recommended complete restructuring of teacher education in the country in terms of its pre, present and post training procedure. New programmes and continuing education was suggested to improve the quality of teachers.
One of the remarkable contributions was to start District Institutes of Education (DIET) across the country to wipe out sub-standard teacher education. DIETs were created to provide quality teacher education training to elementary teachers. As part of professional development, it was also entrusted to organise in-service programmes for the teacher community and those who worked in non-formal and adult education sector. The policy also recommended upgrading of Secondary Teacher Training Colleges to College of Teacher Education (CTE) which will help and assist the work of State Educational Research and Training (SCERT). The commission also recommended National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) to provide all resources to relook into the teacher education programmes and to accredit teacher training institutions. NCTE was also to initiate networking arrangement between university teacher education departments and rest of the teacher training institutions.
As sequel to the National Policy on Education, a Programme of Action was prepared to restructure teacher education programmes on comprehensive manner.
- Establishing DIETs
- Two-fifty teacher training colleges to be updated to Colleges of Teacher Education (CTE)
- Adopt measures to strengthen the SCERTs
- Arrangement of orientation courses to school teachers
- Setting up of Departments of Teacher education in universities and strengthening them
Subsequent to NPE, a centrally sponsored scheme of teacher education was established by the Government in 1987. The objective of the scheme was to provide necessary professional development programmes for school teacher in the country in areas like methods of teaching, pedagogical skills and competence development. Again under the Programme of Mass Orientation to School Teachers, in-service training programme was conducted for 17.2 lakh school teachers in 1986-87.
To review the progress of National Policy on education and POA, the government constituted a committee under the chairmanship of Acharya Ramamurthy. The committee was of the opinion that the NPE and its sequel POA were strong enough to reframe the teacher education programmes and its recommendation should be implemented and translated into action. The Committee also expressed its concern for the non-implementation of many of the recommendations of the POA.