NCTE de-lists thousands of teacher education institutions

The Centre has de-listed thousands of teacher education institutions (TEIs) from its list of recognised institutes as they did not submit details about them in an affidavit as sought by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) about one and a half years ago.

The teacher education regulator, which is an arm of the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry, has recently notified a list of 11,638 TEIs, advising the students to consider taking admission at these institutions only if they want to pursue a degree, diploma or masters programme in education.

The list does not carry the names of the rest of the existing institutions.

A total of 23,219 TEIs were operating across the country before the NCTE issued a directive in 2016, seeking entire details about them in an affidavit, threatening of prosecuting the signatory of the affidavit if the information supplied to it so are "false and wrong."

The Council initiated the move to tighten the functioning of the TEIs, observing that many of them were operating in violation of the Council's regulations. Of the total TEIs, 21,676 institutions were run by private entities while the remaining 1,543 functioned under the respective State governments.

"No decision has yet been taken with regard to the TEIs which failed to furnish information to the council," official sources said.

While the original list of 23,219 TEIs included 1,610 institutes from Karnataka, the new list of 11,638 recognised TEI's, as notified by the NCTE on February 9, included just 490 of those from Karnataka. A total of 75 TEIs in Karnataka are government-run. The remaining institutes are private.

Sources said that a final decision on the fate of over 11000 TEIs is pending with the Council as many of them have approached the court in various states challenging the NCTE move. A section of these institutes have also moved the Supreme Court against the Council.

"The intention behind the NCTE's directive for furnishing of information in an affidavit was to create a database of all the TEIs to ensure transparency and proper monitoring of their functioning," sources said.

The move was initiated after it was observed that large number of TEIs were violating the NCTE regulations as well as terms and conditions under which recognition was granted to them despite "several checks and balances remaining in place," they added.