Chairperson of the Southern Regional Committee of National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) C. Thangamuthu, said that about a million trained teachers will be needed as of now if the requirements of the Right To Education (RTE) Act are to be met for raising standards in Government and aided schools in the country.
“There are many gaps in the teacher-student ratio. Some States are talking of having achieved it, but there are some issues. There cannot be one teacher for 30 students belonging to three to four classes put together,” Prof. Thangamuthu said.
The shortage of teachers was expected to worsen and become acute in the next five to 10 years if remedial measures were not taken over a period of time, he added. Stating that the best brains were not opting for teacher education courses for a long time now, Prof. Thangamuthu said that there was a growing tendency on the part of students to look at B.Ed course as just an insurance cover against unemployment or rather just a qualification in waiting.
As a result, non-seriousness crept into the system with failure rate being very nominal and dubious claims like “irregular B.Ed” courses coming to the fore at the cost of its overall credibility.
Prof. Thangamuthu, who came here to address a national seminar on “Personality and Professionalism in Teaching” organised by the YV Rao Siddhartha College of Education on Tuesday, told reporters that 7,000 out of the total 13,000 B.Ed colleges in the country were located in the four southern states and nearby union territories, which comes to about 55 per cent. Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu topped the list with each having about 600 colleges. Prof. Thangamuthu said that stringent action was being taken against colleges not developing own campus or infrastructure and permission had be withdrawn with regard to nearly 130 such colleges last year in the SRC limits so far. Stressing the need for professionalism, Prof. Thangamuthu called upon a teacher to assume the role of a master personality acquiring such characteristics that would be idealistic and worthy of emulation for moulding the personalities of their students. Retired dean of SV University S. Padmanabhaiah, EFLU professor V. Sudhakar, principal G. Bhuvaneswara Lakshmi and others spoke.
