The Hindu : "Mass-based, quality education need of the hour"

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 26, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh-Hyderabad

"Mass-based, quality education need of the hour"

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD June 25. Education is often said to be the panacea for all social ills, but for education to fulfil this role, it needs to be mass-based and of high quality at the same time, said V.S. Prasad, Vice Chancellor of the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University. It is also believed that with higher access quality is liable to suffer, he said and added that it is a challenge to provide quality education, at reasonable costs to large masses of people.

Prof. Prasad was inaugurating the second three-day `Assessors Training Programme for Teacher Educators' organised jointly by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council and the National Council for Teacher Education here on Wednesday. This training programme is being attended by over 40 senior faculty members from leading educational institutions and aims at building the capacities of those who will assess institutions of teacher education in the Southern States.

Speaking about the collaboration between the NCTE and NAAC, S.K. Ray, Member Secretary, NCTE, said that assessment and accreditation of the 2,600 teacher education institutions in the country had become essential as most were private, self-financing institutions.

He said that assessments and credit ratings were based on whether admissions were transparent and rule-based, on the quality and schedule of courses, methods of recruitment of faculty and their achievements as well as levels of infrastructure development.

Speaking to the press after the inauguration of the training programme, Latha Pillai, advisor, NAAC, said that accreditation was not compulsory when the NAAC was set up nine years ago, but under the 10th Plan, the UGC had earmarked special funds for institutions which get high NAAC ratings. Increasingly, funds as well as students and faculty, would decide on educational institutions based on these rankings. The NCTE had also decided that further expansion of affiliated institutions would only be allowed on the basis of NAAC rankings.

She added that under the current round of training five such workshops are being organised which hope to train 200 teacher educators in assessment techniques.

R.S. Khan, vice chairperson, NCTE, introduced the programme and B.H. Brij Kishore, chairman, national council for rural institutes, presided.

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