Starved of students, training institutes face closure threat

Due to steep decline in the number of students opting for the courses in both the institutions owing to unfriendly policies of the government body regulating the courses, the institutions are pondering whether to close down or continue to face the challenge.

Despite making all efforts to get students enrolled for the DEd course, KPAMRC has seen ‘zero year’ this academic year with not even one student taking up the course.

However, situation is comparatively better in case of St Agnes TTI. This year eight students applied and got admission for the DEd Special Education Mental Retardation course.

Last year nine students graduated while this year 11 will graduate.

Fatal blow

St Agnes Group of Institutions Joint Secretary Sr Dr Olivia AC and KPAMRC Course Co-ordinator Kalpana Prakash say that the special training institutes are in trouble because of faulty moves of the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI), which regulates the course.

They say that the RCI introduced online application and All India online aptitude test last year, which gave a fatal blow.

“Most of the students opting for the course are from rural background who are not comfortable with computers. The RCI has rooted out postal communication completely in terms of sending application,” said Sr Olivia.

Endorsing her view Kalpana said that though 10 students had applied for the course this year, they were unaware that the hall tickets for the all India entrance examination should be downloaded from the website. Hence many failed to appear for the exam.
Further, according to St Agnes TTI Principal Sr Daisy AC, students have to apply online between December and March after sending a DD of Rs 500 to the RCI.

“Since PUC results will be out only during April or May, many do not apply due to uncertainty over their PU results. The Rs 500 is not refunded by the Council,” Kalpana said adding that according to Government norms the teacher-pupil ratio in special schools must be 1:7 but due to restricted sanction of teacher posts to the schools by the Government and low pay scale the ratio at present is 1:17.

Two-year course

The Principal adds that RCI made the one year DEd course as two year course, which led to further decline in number of takers. With St Agnes TTI students like Ambili P S and Bellarmine D bagging gold medal at the national-level academically over the last two years and with growing demand for special teachers, the institute is now wondering how to bring in students to take up the course.

However, the managements of both the institutions say that it’s time government took special note of these institutions and stopped treating them on par with other normal schools when it comes to financial support and sanction of posts.