and educational efficiency, teacher education at all levels should be brought within the scope of the universities.

4.12 To upgrade all training institutions for primary and pre- primary teachers to the university standard immediately would be impossible in view of the heavy costs involved and the large number of qualified teacher educators needed. The programme which will have to be spread over a number of years with a suitable transitional strategy, should forms: (1) the establishment of comprehensive colleges; (2) a phased programme of upgrading all training institutions for pre-primary and primary teachers to the collegiate standard; and (3) the establishment of State Boards of Teacher Education as bridges, during the transitional period, between the training institutions for pre-primary and primary teachers and the universities.

(1) Comprehensive Colleges. Colleges should be established wherever possible to prepare teachers for several stages of education and/or for a number of special fields. Some institutions of this type already exist and have shown good results. What is now needed is a planned attempt to develop more institutions of this type and to add sections for training primary and/or pre-primary teachers to training colleges that now prepare teachers for secondary schools only.

(2) Upgrading Training Institutions for Pre-Primary and Primary Teachers. Institutions for the training of pre-primary and primary teachers (which now admit students who have completed the lower secondary stage of education and which will raise this admission qualification to the completion of the higher secondary stage in the course of the next 10 to 15 years) should be upgraded to the collegi- ate standard and a phased programme prepared for the purpose, sepa- rately for each State. This entails that the qualifications and salaries of staff should be comparable to those in affiliated college. The qualifications of students should also be comparable and curricula and programmes of teacher education should be brought under the con- trol of the university. Given due priority and an adequate allocation of funds, it should be possible to do this within a period of 15 to 20 years.

(3) State Boards of Teacher Education. In the transitional period, when some institutions for teacher education would be under the Department and others within the fold of the universities, a bridge between them may be created by establishing State Boards of Teacher Education. These should consist of representatives of universities, State Departments of Education, principals of training 'institutions, the National Association of Teacher Educators and teachers' organizations. They should be responsible for all aspects of teacher education at the State level, such as-

(a) prescribing standards for training institutions;

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(b) improving curricula, programmes, examinations, textbooks and instructional materials for teacher education;

(d) offering consultative services to the institutions;

(e) ensuring that candidates completing the prescribed courses are competent to teach in the schools of the State; and (f) preparing plans for the immediate and long-term development of teacher education, both qualitative and quantitative.

Each Board should be set up by the State Government and should have a full-time secretary. The State Institute of Education should be closely associated with it. The Board should take over all the functions of the Department of Education in regard to pre-primary and primary training institutions and should advise on the secondary training colleges which will be with the universities.

The establishment of State Boards of Teacher Education is not a new recommendation. It was made earlier by the Secondary Education Commission, the International Team on Teachers and Curricula for Secondary Schools and by a number of seminars and study-groups. Unfortunately, no action has been taken so far. We regard this as a crucial recommendation on which immediate action is needed.

IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF TEACHER EDUCATION

4.13 Our next recommendation is that the quality of the existing programmes of teacher education should be considerably improved. The essence of a programme of teacher education is 'quality' and in its absence, teacher education becomes, not only a financial waste but a source of overall deterioration in educational standards. We attach the highest importance to this programme of qualitative Improvement. Existing programmes of teacher education are largely traditional, rigid and divorced from the realities of schools and existing or proposed programmes of educational reconstruction. Reorganization is needed at all levels and in all courses and it will not be possible for us to examine all aspects of this problem in detail. We shall, however, indicate here some broad principles on which this reorganization should be attempted. These are:

- reorientation of subject-knowledge; - vitalization of professional studies; - improvement in methods of teaching and evaluation; - improvement of student-teaching;

132 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 4.14

- development of special courses and programmes; and - revision and improvement of curricula.

4.14 Reorientation of Subject-knowledge. There should be provision in the training programme, at both primary and secondary levels, for a study of the subjects to be taught, in depth as well as in range. This study should not be confused with a programme of the study of subjects not offered at the college stage nor with the mere imparting of additional information in the subject. It should be a carefully planned content course which would include a study of fundamental concepts and their implications for the school syllabus, and of the textbooks and growing source materials to assist teaching at the school stage. About 20 per cent of the time in the training programme should ordinarily be given to such studies.

4.15 Duration of the Training Course. This raises the question of the duration of the training course. At the primary stage, a minimum of two years is needed; and if the course is lengthened to two years in all areas where it is one year, there would be no difficulty in providing the needed courses in subject-matter. At the secondary stage, where the duration of the course is only one year, it has been suggested that it should be increased to two years, to do justice to the existing heavy courses and to incorporate the proposed subject- matter courses. From a financial and practical point of view this does not seem feasible. However, it is possible to make better use of the existing duration by extending the working days in the academic year from the existing level of 180-190 days to 230 days. Academic years of such lengths have been adopted in some secondary training institutions with very good results; and we recommend that the reform should be extended to all institutions without delay.

4.16 Reorientation in the subject-knowledge of secondary teachers should be done in collaboration with competent university departments and, where necessary, with the arts and science colleges doing post- graduate work. Each training institution should work out a detailed scheme involving university departments or colleges and including the use of their laboratories and libraries. Professors and lecturers should cooperate with training college staff in developing and providing new courses. Similar courses for primary teachers should be provided by staff members holding a Master's degree in collaboration with the staff of arts and science colleges.

4.17 These reorientation courses in subject-knowledge should be closely related to the special techniques and methods used in teaching the subject concerned. Set lesson plans with emphasis on rigid methods

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should be avoided and the student-teacher should be guided to develop his teaching programme in a creative manner.

4.18 Integrated Courses of General and Professional Education. An alternative way to link the study of subjects with professional preparation at the level of secondary teachers is to provide concurrent and integrated courses in general and professional education, on the pattern of teacher education in the USA. Courses of this type have been introduced in a few selected subjects in the Kurukshetra University in Punjab, in the Regional Colleges of Education and in one Rural Institute. In the Kurukshetra experiment, the total period of education has been reduced by one year, and the B.Ed. degree can be obtained in four years after the SSLC or the Matriculation examination.

4.19 The utility and feasibility of these integrated courses have been widely questioned. It has been argued that this experiment has not, and will not succeed in India since a young student, about 16 or 17 years old, who has just completed secondary education does not ordinarily decide to be a school teacher. It is also contended that there is no evidence to show that the products of these integrated courses are better in any way than teachers who have first taken their degree and then completed their professional education; and that the dwindling enrolments in such courses (except where substantial stipends are provided) show that the experiment has no promising future. Although we do not subscribe to all the objections raised, it is obvious that these integrated courses, even when developed to their fullest potential, can only provide a very small proportion of the total number of trained teachers required at the secondary stage (estimates vary from 5 to 10 per cent) on account of the heavy expenditure involved therein. We feel that it would be wrong to place an undue emphasis on such marginal experiments and that, from the point of view of raising standards in teacher education, it would be better to concentrate on improving the professional one-year course following the first or the second degree.

4.20 If such integrated courses are to be organized at all-and we do believe that they have a place in the elastic and varied system we are recommending-they should be organized in universities rather than in separate institutions set up for the purpose as is now being done in the Regional Colleges of Education. Such colleges necessarily prove to be expensive as regards staffing and equipment. High quality staff do not join such institutions readily as adequate facilities to pursue studies in their special academic field or for undertaking research do not exist. While existing colleges may continue, such institutions should not be expanded. The experiment should be tried, as we have

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recommended, in universities having strong departments or schools of education which should work in collaboration with departments in other subjects.

4.21 Vitalizing Professional Studies. It is not sufficiently realized that courses for professional subjects contain a great deal of matter which is either out of date or has little relevance to a teacher's work in the school. Such dead matter should be eliminated and replaced by what is directly related to the personal and professional needs of student-teachers. While the overcrowding of content should be avoided, there is need to coordinate and integrate the different courses and to root the entire curriculum in Indian conditions.

4.22 Two basic weaknesses are mainly responsible for the compara- tively low status of professional studies in training institutions. The first is the absence of adequate research on problems under Indian conditions. This compels teacher educators to explain theory, more often than not, with illustrations from foreign countries. There is also a tendency on the part of teacher educators to deal too much with generalities and platitudes. The corollary to this is the absence of high quality original books on pedagogy and educational science as applied to India and prepared by Indian authors. Absence of such books is a glaring weakness at the primary stage where the student- teacher does not have adequate command over English and is compelled to fall back solely upon cheap guides written to help him pass examinations. These deficiencies must be remedied and large-scale programmes to develop research in educational problems and to produce the needed educational literature in English as well as in the modern Indian languages need to be organized.

4.23 Improving Methods of Teaching and Evaluation. Methods of teaching and evaluation in training institutions are extremely im- portant and the attitudes of the student-teacher will be influenced more by the methods used with them, than by what they are formally taught about the methods they should use in schools. Unfortunately there is little realization of this and the methods of teaching and evaluation used in the training institutions continue to be largely traditional. An immediate and drastic change is thus called for and we would like to make the following main suggestions:

- An attempt should be made to develop the student-teachers' maturity through contacts, experience, study and discussion. This needs the use of methods requiring student participation and independent study. As their earlier education cannot ordinarily be expected to have developed habits of self-study and independent thinking, the training institutions have to make good this

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deficiency to the extent possible and give students opportunities to think, read, study and discuss. Individual library work, preparation of reviews and reports, case studies, project work, discussions and seminars should form an integral part of the work of training institutions.

Time should also be found to orientate students' attitudes to the significance and possibilities of the profession that they have chosen, to awaken a sensitiveness to the human factors involved, and to stress the social values of educational development.

A number of new techniques and methods are being developed rapidly in the advanced countries, such as the use of radio, television and films in classroom teaching, programmed instruction and language laboratories, to mention only a few. In India, the radio has just been introduced in the schools and, in the next few years, the other aids would begin to be available on an increasing scale. It would be desirable that the teachers under training should be introduced to them, first in their own learning programmes and later on in their teaching practice.

4.24 The examination system also needs considerable reform. At present, the system of external examinations adopted for training institutions is very similar to that used in the schools and suffers from all the well-known defects. Unless this examination is reformed and the teachers are initiated into the new techniques of evaluation as a part of their training programme, the reform of examinations, in schools will not be successful. A systematic effort has to be made, therefore, on a high priority basis, to improve the nature of the examinations in training institutions. Internal assessment, which evaluates all the work of a student under training, should also be introduced and emphasized as a regular feature. This has already been done on a small scale. Although it has raised the problem of uniformity of assessment of different institutions affiliated to the same university, it has also had a salutary effect on the training programme as a whole and encouraged work directly related to the responsibilities of a teacher. Early steps should, therefore, be taken to expand the use of internal assessment and to give it a more significant place in the final evaluation. In addition, teacher educators should maintain cumulative records of student-teachers in consultation with them. In this way, trainees will learn by doing how the cumulative records of their own pupils should be maintained.

4.25 Improvement of Student-teaching. At present, student- teachers are commonly required to give a specified number of isolated lessons, many of which are often unsupervised or ill-supervised. The

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practice of continuous block-teaching, the duration of which varies from two to six weeks, is adopted only in a few institutions and its organization still leaves much to be desired. In our opinion, student-teaching should be provided in two stages. The objective of the first stage should be to orient the student-teacher to the entire school situation and to initiate him into actual teaching. He should have opportunities to observe good teaching and to become familiar with the school programmes as a whole. He should know the kind of service provided in the school library, the workshop, the art room and on the playground and the role played by teachers of different sub- jects and the career-master or the counsellor. He should become acquainted with the school assembly programme and the co-curricular activities in the school. He may begin his teaching practice with teaching individual children, then proceed to small groups and eventu- ally learn to manage full classes having normal strength. The objec- tive of the second stage should be to enable him to do continuous teaching for a specified period of at least eight weeks, under actual school conditions, by working as a teacher in a selected school. The first type of experience is easy to provide. But it is the second that is of crucial importance and we recommend that its provision should become an integral part of all teacher education at all levels on the broad lines discussed earlier.

4.26 Development of Special Courses and Programmes. New courses required to meet special needs should also be developed. We have already referred to the two-year M.A. course and to courses in education to be introduced at the undergraduate and postgraduate stages. At present, there are no special courses for headmasters. Since so much depends upon the heads of institutions, it would be desirable to introduce short induction courses for teachers who have been promoted as headmasters. There is an equally urgent need for special courses for teacher educators of primary and secondary training institutions. The employment of graduates in primary schools-even at the lower primary stage-has been increasing and a special course designed for them could be of great value. It would also be desirable to train teachers for two consecutive stages, or in such a way that with some further orientation or training, they could also teach at a higher level. The methods of teaching in classes I and II need to be informal and it would be useful to train the teachers at this level in a combined course for pre-primary and primary schools. Similarly, there should be combined courses which prepare teachers both for primary and secondary schools. We recommend that further details of these courses should be worked out, on a high priority basis, by the Department of Teacher Education

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