‘A short-sighted approach': Parliamentary panel recommends BElEd programme's continuation

Indian Express

12 hours ago

A parliamentary panel has recommended the continuation of the Bachelor of Elementary Education (BElEd) programme, a four-year course in elementary teacher education, which the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) has proposed to scrap.
The committee, headed by Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, reviewed NCTE's functioning in its report.
Earlier this year, NCTE issued draft regulations that lay down norms and standards for teacher education programmes. The draft regulations said that the BElEd programme, a four-year course introduced in 1994-95 that focused on teaching at the elementary level (classes 1 to 8), will be discontinued from 2026-27 onwards. It said institutions that were offering the programme will have to transition to the new Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP) by the 2026-27 academic session.
ITEP is a four-year programme (BA BEd/ BSc BEd/ BCom BEd) after Class 12, which has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. NEP calls for a four-year integrated BEd degree to be the minimum qualification for teaching by 2030.
The Union Education Ministry's Department of School Education and Literacy told the committee that BElEd is a 'high faculty demand programme' because it demands 16 faculty members for a batch of 50 students. In contrast, for ITEP, the faculty requirement has been 'brought down' to nine, the Department told the committee.
The department also pointed out that 'even after three decades,' BElEd remained confined to a few colleges in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. BElEd is being offered in 99 institutions, 'and it is struggling to expand', the Department told the committee, adding that a proposal for its discontinuation is under consideration, and the government is yet to take a view on the matter.
The committee has recommended that NCTE address the limitations of the BElEd programme, if any, by upgrading its curriculum and encouraging more institutions to offer it. It has suggested that the NCTE leverage the 'established history and expertise' of the programme, instead of scrapping a 'reputed, well-established and internationally acclaimed programme' which has been run effectively for more than 30 years.
Noting that BElEd has served as a rigorous, research-based and socially conscious route for training elementary school teachers, particularly for urban poor and rural students, the committee has recommended that states be allowed to continue offering the programme, and the faculty and infrastructure developed for it be preserved. It has also suggested the 'replication of the B.El.Ed. program in additional institutions under ITEP.'
The committee has also called for a review of the draft regulations that NCTE issued earlier this year, and pointed out that the Department of School Education and Literacy should hold consultative meetings with state governments before it arrives at changes in the structure of teacher education, since education is in the concurrent list of the Constitution.
'It is also recommended to allow multiple programmes and models of teacher education and not to shut down successful existing programmes,' the committee's report noted.
The committee has also called for filling vacancies for school teachers. 'The Committee observes that there are around 10 lakhs vacancies of teachers in Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) funded schools in various States and there are around 7.5 lakh vacancies at elementary and primary levels,' the report stated.
'The Committee notes that there is no improvement in filling up of vacancy positions in these SSA funded schools of the State Governments in spite of repeated recommendations of the Committee…to fill up the vacancies in a time bound manner, rather it is worsening day by day due to retirements of teachers and due to absence of a permanent recruitment policy,' it added.
In April this year, eminent professors of education from across the world, including Prof Michael Apple at the University of Wisconsin, Prof William Pinar at the University of British Columbia, and Prof Robin Alexander, Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, had written to Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan asking that the plans to discontinue BElEd be cancelled.