How does NEP 2020 Intend to Empower Teachers?

Overview

Teachers constitute a fundamental element of the education ecosystem and society at large. A responsible, knowledgeable, and engaged teacher mirrors his attributes, qualities, and approach in his students. With his ideologies, thoughts, and actions, he creates a generation that makes valuable contributions to the world. In other words, teachers shape every generation and hence, can be termed the architect of the future of the nation.

Therefore, teachers hold an important position in the Indian culture, and NEP 2020 intends to empower teachers through a range of reforms and changes. If you are a 21st-century educator and teacher, reading this blog will help, as it discusses ten significant aspects associated with teachers, as mentioned in NEP 2020.

10 Highlights Associated with NEP 2020’s Teacher Empowerment

The new education policy of India acknowledges the gap created out of the misalignment of various intertwined elements, including teacher education, recruitment, deployment, service conditions, and empowerment. Hence, it intends to bring the best of teachers in the education sector and enhance the quality of education and its outcome. Let us take a look at ten crucial highlights relating to teacher empowerment in NEP 2020.

Teacher’s Recruitment and Deployment

In India, unfortunately, the teaching profession, especially in the modern age, is looked at as a low-profile career option. Intelligent students refrain from entering the teaching profession, owing to the low status and salaries associated with it. Surprisingly, many people keep teaching as a last resort and take it up if they do not turn successful anywhere else. As a result, students never get to learn under top-quality teachers!

The NEP 2020 intends to turn the situation around by ensuring the entry of meritorious students in the teaching profession, especially from the country’s rural areas. It includes introducing a large number of PAN India merit-based scholarships to study quality four years integrated B.Ed. programs. It also includes developing special merit-based scholarships that involve preferential employment in local areas after completing the B.Ed. program.

These scholarships will provide local employment to native students, particularly the female ones, who will serve as highly-qualified local role-models who speak the local language fluently. Besides, the program also involves giving incentives to these teachers, out of which providing local housing near or in the school and increased housing allowances are two of the most significant and attractive ones.

Alongside, the practice of excessive teacher transfers will be stopped. Transfers will only happen in unavoidable and exclusive circumstances, as suitably laid down by the state/ UT government. TETs (Teacher Eligibility Tests) will be conducted across all four stages (foundational, preparatory, middle, and secondary). A classroom demonstration or interview will become an integral part of the teacher hiring process to gauge teaching skills.

Teacher’s Service Environment and Culture

Building teacher communities is an important concern in this regard. It involves optimizing teachers’ skills and upgrading them as and when the need be. It also includes developing comprehensive communities that not only involve teachers but also engage students, parents, principals, and the administrative staff of schools to fulfill one common objective, and that is to ensure that the students are learning in the desired way.

Furthermore, this initiative includes the provision of clean workplaces, hygienic toilets, electricity, internet, computing devices, a pleasant working environment, sports, and recreational resources to optimize teaching and learning. The state/ UT governments may adopt innovative formats such as school complexes, school rationalization, and community building. Besides, the initiative also involves including small school teachers in the larger communities and foster the exchange of best teaching practices, thoughts, and vital insights.

Teachers’ Productivity

In India, engaging teachers in non-teaching related jobs, especially across the government sector, has been a routine practice. Engaging someone who isn’t trained and qualified for a particular job does not yield results. Besides, if teachers are drifted away from teaching, they wouldn’t prove productive in their core job either! As a result, the entire education ecosystem suffers, and it is students, in particular, lose the most.

The NEP 2020 intends to disengage teachers from non-teaching tasks such as administrative work, etc. restricting their involvement to the rationalized minimum time required for the mid-day meal work. It will relieve them from these strenuous tasks and increase their bandwidth for them to focus on the core teaching tasks.

Freedom of Choosing the Learning Approach

The conventional educational system in India allowed very little to no scope for teachers to innovate or adopt novel teaching and learning practices. Hence, teachers had no option but to restrict themselves to traditional teaching practices and techniques until now. Age-old teaching techniques restrict learning and, therefore, also limit the outcome. These limitations demanded a reform allowing teachers to explore ideas and execute them.

NEP 2020 does exactly what is required out of teachers in the 21st century. It gives them the autonomy of choosing the aspects of pedagogy to enable them to teach in the manner they deem effective for students. Besides, teachers will focus on socio-emotional learning to foster students’ holistic development. They will be recognized for approaches that improve the learning experience, and therefore the learning outcome.

Continuous Professional Development (CPD)

Teachers should not confine themselves to a particular set of soft and hard skills. They must adopt the students’ learning approach to bring in improvements and align themselves with the needs of the ever-evolving world. In this view, NEP 2020 intends to provide continuous skill and professional development opportunities through various local, regional, state, and national-level workshops and online development modules.

The policy requires every teacher to participate in a minimum of 50 hours of CPD opportunities annually for self-development, driven by their interests. CPD opportunities will cover the latest pedagogies relating to competency-based learning, foundational literacy and numeracy, formative and adaptive assessment of learning outcomes, and others such as experiential learning, sports-integrated, arts-integrated approaches.

Besides teachers, school principals and school complex leaders will also undergo at least 50 hours of leadership and management workshops under CPD opportunities to be better leaders, decision-makers, and contributors.

Career Management and Progression (CMP)

Teachers, too, are required to keep up with their expenses, family, and inflation. Besides, they also have aspirations of growing in their career. In this view, NEP 2020 includes the development of systems and procedures to recognize the outstanding work of teachers, promote them, and give salary raises.

The appraisal system will comprise multiple assessment parameters, including peer reviews, commitment, attendance, CPD hours, and other contributions to the school and the community. Further, the availability of career growth will be ensured across a single school stage. There will be no progression-related incentive or perk for the teacher for moving from the early stage to the later ones.

Besides, the vertical growth of teachers will also be encouraged. Teachers exhibiting a certain level of leadership and management qualities would be trained to take up academic leadership positions across schools, school complexes, CRCs, BITEs, etc., and the relevant government departments.

Development of NPST by 2022

National Professional Standards for Teacher (NPST) will be developed by 2022 by the National Council for Teacher Education in its restructured form as a Professional Standard Setting Body (PSSB) under the General Education Council (GEC). NPST will be developed in consultation with NCERT, SCERT, expert organizations in teacher preparation and development, expert bodies in vocational education, teachers across various levels and from different regions, and higher education institutions.

NPST’s standards would cover teachers’ role across various stages and competencies required for a particular stage and the performance appraisal standards for every stage. Besides, NPST will also inform the design of the pre-service teacher education programs, which can be further adopted by states to determine the various aspects of teacher career management such as professional development, salary, efforts, tenure, etc.

However, promotions and salary raises will not happen on the basis of tenure or seniority, but on the basis of teacher’s contribution and the appraisals conducted. The standards will be reviewed in 2030, and after that, they will be reviewed after every ten years to ensure competence and relevance across the system.

Teacher Education

In view of producing high-quality teachers and imparting high-quality education, the NEP 2020 gives special emphasis on teacher education. Some of the reforms in this regard include,

By 2030, teachers will require a minimum of 4-year integrated B.Ed. Degree including a range of knowledge content and pedagogy, along with comprehensive practical training in the student-teaching form at the local schools.

Teachers holding a bachelor’s degree can go for a 2-year B.Ed. program.

These B.Ed. programs can be suitably adapted as a 1-year B.Ed. program for those who have completed the equivalent of a 4-year multidisciplinary bachelor’s degree, or those who have completed a master’s degree in a particular subject and want to become a teacher in that particular subject.

The competence of B.Ed. programs will be enhanced by introducing new learning pedagogies, along with the time-tested ones, multi-level teaching, and evaluation, teaching children with special interests, learner-centered and collaborative learning, teaching children with disabilities, practical training, etc.

Besides, the B.Ed. programs will also emphasize the practice of the Fundamental Duties (Article 51A) of the Indian Constitution, along with other Constitutional provisions while teaching any subject or performing any activity.

Furthermore, the course will also include augmenting awareness and sensitivity towards the environment so that environmental education can be included in the school curricula.

Post-B.Ed. shorter courses will also be available for teachers who wish to specialize in a particular subject.

Formulation of National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education

By 2021, NCTE will formulate a new and comprehensive National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE 2021) in consultation with NCERT based on NEP 2020’s principles. NCTE will develop the framework after discussions with all the state governments, ministries/ departments of the Central Government, and various expert organizations. Besides, the framework will be made available in regional languages.

Further, NCFTE 2021 will also include requirements of teacher education curricula for vocational education. The framework will be revised once every five to ten years by reflecting the changes in the revised NCFs and the evolving needs of education for teachers.

The integrity of the Teacher Education System

To foster uniformity in education across the entire country and to restore the integrity of the teacher education system, NEP 2020 involves taking stringent action against substandard and stand-alone Teacher Education Institutions (TEI) operational in the country, and closing them down, in case it is required to do so.

Conclusion

Teachers being given the importance they deserve, signify signs of prosperity and value creation in the Indian education system. It will strengthen the Indian education ecosystem, augment the quality of education, and thus contribute to better and fruitful results. The successful implementation of these policies will certainly help India reach the heights it desires to achieve in the years to come. For more information on NEP 2020, visit https://www.education.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/NEP_Final_English_0.pdf.