NAAC to assess teacher education institutes again

COIMBATORE: More than one-and-a-half years after its decision to discontinue accreditation of teacher education institutions, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has now decided to go the opposite way and assess the institutions. It has in place a draft manual to assess programmes offered at these institutions, including that for special and physical education. Feedback and suggestions on the draft manual have been invited from faculty, educationists and other stakeholders by May 10.

According to the draft module, the institutions will be assessed based on a seven parameters -- curricular aspects (100), teaching-learning and evaluation (350), research and extension (120), infrastructure and learning resources (100), students support and progression (130), governance, leadership and management (100), and institution values and best practices (100). After the feedback is in hand, a national consultative meeting will be held to finalise and upload the manual, said NAAC Director S C Sharma in a communication dated April 22.

In August 2017, the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) had decided to undertake accreditation of teacher education programmes. It had even prepared a ranking and accreditation framework titled TeachR. A month later, the NAAC decided to discontinue its accreditation of such institutions. With this decision, NCTE’s TeachR did not come into effect. 

NAAC’s decision has received welcome amidst the faculty of these institutions; they expressed hope in this helping them get benefits like RUSA funding.