The size of Indias massive teachers community estimated at 7 million currently, is set to cross the 10 million mark (almost 1 percent of the countrys population) within the next couple of years. Under the Union governments Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyaan (national secondary education campaign), announced by prime minister Manmohan Singh last year on Independence Day, 6,000 new Central government built model schools — one in every administrative block countrywide — are in the works. Moreover 40,000 plus government secondary schools across the country will be upgraded. The anticipated demand surge for teachers has already thrown the Union HRD ministry, which is hard put to fill the existing 3 lakh vacancies under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (‘Education for All) primary school programme, into a tizzy.
Therefore, there is a burst of renewed activity within the hitherto quota-reservations (in Central government tertiary education institutions) obsessed HRD ministry, which has suddenly gone into over-drive in matters related to secondary education. The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE, estb.1995), which was about to be shut down due to lackadaisical performance, is being energised and reinvigorated. Simultaneously NCERT has been roped in to help in the development of a revised teacher education curriculum, says A.K. Rath, secretary in the department of school education and literacy in the Union HRD ministry.
The revived NCTE has been given the brief to formulate a ‘teacher education policy which will serve as a guide for teacher training and development in the future. A high-powered committee is busy developing a draft document of the policy, which as soon as it is ready, will be presented to all stakeholders for debate before its finalisation. A series of position papers is also being developed for the purpose and will greatly help in transforming the content and process of teacher education and development, says Prof. Mohammad Akhtar Siddiqui, chairman of NCTE, which is also engaged in locational mapping of teacher education institutions at the district level.
As a first step, NCTE has initiated a study on ‘demand and supply estimates of school teachers and teacher educators: 2007-08 to 2016-17 in the context of universalisation of secondary education by 2020, says Siddiqui. Evidently intent upon making the revived NCTE an effective institution, Union HRD minister Arjun Singh has asked the council to regenerate public confidence in itself as a regulatory body, and investigate regional imbal-ances so that each region has adequate, even if not an equal number of teacher training institutions. To this end, he has changed his traditional ideological stance and welcomed public-private partnerships in teacher education.
Meanwhile another committee chaired by Prof. C.L. Anand, former vice-chancellor of Arunachal University, has been constituted to update and finalise a new Draft Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education which is expected to be ready by year end for implementation. Simultaneously yet another committee chaired by Prof. D.N. Sansanwal of Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore is reviewing the existing formats/forms used for pre and post recognition processes of teacher training colleges.

A group of experts within NCTE is designing and developing compre-hensive manuals detailing the quality of libraries and laboratories in teacher training institutions, which will help in raising the quality of graduate teachers, adds Siddiqui. Additionally reconstituted NCTE regional committees sited in Bhubaneswar, Bhopal, Bangalore and Jaipur have initiated action to derecognise fake and shoddy teacher training colleges and have withdrawn recognition granted to 18 substandard colleges in Karnataka and another 100 in north India.
Belatedly, at a time when an imminent teacher shortage crisis threatens to derail fast-track 21st century Indias much hyped demographic advantage, the HRD ministry and education establishment — which not only tolerates under-staffing but mass teacher absenteeism — is waking up to the scale of the problem. The only consolation: better late than never.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)