National Council for Teacher Education

The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) is a statutory body of the Indian government which was set up in 1995 under the National Council for Teacher Education Act, 1993.

The NCTE aims to oversee the formal standards, protocols, procedures, and processes in the Indian basic education system.

What does the NCTE do?

• The NCTE functions on the central and the state level and handles all matter related to Teacher Education.
• The NCTE’s secretariat is located in New Delhi along with the Department of Teacher Education and National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
• NCTE is currently facing challenges in ensuring the standards of teacher education in the country and now aims to prevent the increase of substandard/non-conforming teacher education/training institutions in the country.

What is the current scenario?

• NCTE plans to weed out, improve or shut down several sub-standard teacher education institutions in the country.
• As per one estimate, India has 6 times the Teacher education institutes in the country than required.
• Hence, NCTE plans to conduct the first-ever performance appraisal of the 19,000 teacher education institutions it currently oversees.

Why is the oversupply of education dangerous?

• Even if the 19000 institutes produce only 100 teachers each year, they can still potentially produce over 19 lakh graduates per year.
• The demand for new teachers in India is only 3 lakh.
• This creates a massive oversupply and as a result, the teacher pay is falling significantly in an employer’s market.

What NCTE plans for the future?

• The NCTE plans to finish this performance appraisal process and remove the worst academic institutions before the start of the new academic year.
• The NCTE aims to start new initiatives which include the setting up of over 700 model institutions in the country with at least one teacher training institute per district, establishing a new leadership training program for the leaders like principals and headteachers.
• It also aims to include new experiment international teaching qualification which will potentially prepare teachers who want to work abroad.