New Delhi, Feb. 4: India’s apex teacher education regulator is seeking amendments to the law governing it to override a Supreme Court judgement that allowed states to impose their own norms for primary school teacher training.
The cabinet today approved amendments to the National Council for Teacher Education Act that will specifically state that the NCTE’s regulations on primary school teaching qualifications will apply across the country instead of state norms.
The amendments come after a prolonged tussle between the Bengal government and the Centre over teacher-training schools in the state that were violating NCTE norms.
Despite concerns over these training institutions raised by the Centre, Bengal not only allowed them to continue but hired teachers for its schools from them. These teachers had qualifications deemed unfit by the NCTE.
The NCTE argued that its law stated that its regulations on schoolteachers were valid across the country. Bengal argued that its government norms would apply rather than the central regulations.
Calcutta High Court even struck down several of these institutions as illegal because they were flouting NCTE regulations.
But some of these institutions have recently cited a Supreme Court judgement pertaining to Uttar Pradesh in which the apex court has held the state’s norms as superior to NCTE regulations.
In this judgement, the apex court argued that while the NCTE act mentions “teachers”, including those tutoring in schools, it does not mention “primary teachers” specifically.
Neither the human resource development ministry nor the NCTE were impleaded in this case.
The proposed amendments cleared by the cabinet today seek to clearly specify that the writ of the NCTE will run over regulations for primary school teachers.
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