Accreditation of all higher education institutes to be made mandatory from 2013

Accreditation for all higher educational institutions will be made mandatory from next year. With the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority (NARA) bill hanging fire for the last two years, the human resource development (HRD) ministry is planning to make accreditation mandatory for public and private institutions through executive order to continue with the reform process.

Accreditation of educational institutions will help students assess the quality of programmes and courses, physical infrastructure and faculty. At present, only a fraction -- about 15% institutions -- are accredited.

HRD minister M M Pallam Raju said both Universities Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) have been tasked with preparing benchmarks for the accreditation process. In fact, the ministry will be writing to state governments to establish accreditation agencies that will inspect institutions on these regulatory benchmarks.

AICTE has also been asked to set up another accreditation agency — Indian Board of Accreditation — that will assist the existing National Board of Accreditation in inspections of institutions. "There was need felt for a new accreditation body and AICTE will set up the IBA by February," Raju said.

AICTE has under it 3,800 technical institutions, 3,700 management institutions, 3,500 polytechnics, 240 hotel management institutions and 60 applied art institutions. These institutions approach AICTE every year for either renewal of their accreditation or for introduction of new disciplines or other expansion plans. There are 60,000 programmes that are accredited under AICTE at present.

"There is a long pendency already and once the process is made mandatory, the waiting period will only increase. We have to build our capacity before that," AICTE chairman Prof S S Mantha said.

Under the NARA bill, existing universities will be given six years to complete the accreditation process while new universities will be allowed to complete teaching two batches of students. However, it remains unclear how the government will succeed in enforcing the accreditation process through rules.

HRD ministry officials said that under the UGC Act, the commission was empowered to shut down a department if there was non-compliance. However, that has not been done so far.

93% aspirants fail teacher’s eligibility test

With a staggering 93% of aspiring school teachers failing to clear the Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) 2012, the quality of teacher training in the country has come under the scanner.

The results of the competency test conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education, declared on Tuesday, show that just around 7% of the 7.85 lakh managing to clear the exam.

Of the 8,61,231 aspirants registered of which 76,004 could not appear in the test due to the assembly elections in five states. Of the 7,85,227 aspirants who appeared only 55,422 managed to clear either paper I or paper II or both.

What's even more worrying that this year's performance is worse than the CTET in 2011, which recorded around 9% pass percentage. Meanwhile, after the dismal show last year, the Ministry of Human Resource Development has already asked the CBSE to analyse the results institution wise and has decided to provide feedbacks to teacher education institutions so that they can improve on their teaching and training.

The CTET was introduced in 2011 by the ministry to improve the quality of teaching in schools after the enactment of the Right to Education Act.

The CTET certification has been made mandatory to become a teacher for classes I to VIII in any central government school, while the CBSE affiliated schools can either recruit teachers based on the CTET or the respective test conducted by the states.

In fact, the Delhi government too decided to adopt the CTET for recruitment of teachers for government run and aided schools.

The CTET comprised two papers, paper I for teachers for classes I to V and paper II for classes VI to VIII. Aspirants who wish to get certified for classes I to VIII need to clear both the papers.

The objective is to test their knowledge on the syllabi - English, mathematics and environmental science.