New Delhi, March 18: Aspiring school teachers may soon need to study longer and meet stricter qualification norms than at present, under a new national teacher education curriculum roadmap the human resource development ministry is scheduled to unveil tomorrow.

Current teacher training programmes across the country should be replaced by longer courses, including teaching experience at schools, the new national curriculum framework for teacher education will recommend, officials told The Telegraph.

The curriculum framework, which human resource development minister Kapil Sibal will tomorrow unveil, is critical to the government’s plans of balancing the need to fill massive vacancies in teaching posts, while improving standards of teaching.

India’s teacher training programmes at present adhere to a curriculum framework drafted in 1998 -- before the launch of key school education initiatives that either have, or hold the potential to, transform schooling in the country.

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, started in 2002, has helped improve the gross enrolment rate into primary schools to over 95 per cent. But the quality of education imparted at many schools has been questioned. Many states also struggle with chronic teacher shortage.

In 2005, India adopted a National Curriculum Framework for school education textbooks, for the first time emphasising that schooling must focus on activity-based learning, must be child-centric and sensitive to students from disadvantaged groups.

The landmark Right to Education Act will be implemented from April 1, providing for legal punishment for teachers that physically punish students and school administrators who turn away students despite having vacant seats.

But current teacher training courses based on the 1998 framework do not adequately address the challenges thrown up by the education programme, curriculum framework and the education legislation.

Teacher education has also exploded as an industry over the period since the last curriculum framework.

From 3,489 courses in 3,199 institutions and an intake of 274,072 in 2004, the numbers swelled to 14,523 courses in 12,266 institutions with an intake of 10,73,661 by December 2008, according to the ministry’s data.

“It is all these changes that have forced us to evolve a new teacher education curriculum that will help us meet the challenges of hiring more teachers, while improving the skills teachers today need,” a source said.

Teachers in classes up to VIII at present need a D.Ed (diploma in education) which can be acquired through a two-year course immediately after completing high school.

A B.Ed (bachelor in education) obtained as a second degree after initial graduation in a particular subject allows a teacher to teach in secondary and higher secondary classes. The B.Ed course has a one-year duration now.

But the new curriculum framework suggests gradually replacing the two-year post-school diploma -- D.Ed -- with a degree-level course similar to a four year B.El.Ed (bachelor of elementary education) which Delhi University offers.

The two-year diploma straight after school does not even equip prospective teachers with basic knowledge of subjects they will teach in elementary school, the framework says.

The framework also recommends a gradual shift from the one-year B.Ed to a two-year programme “with deeper and more protracted engagement with school-based experience and reflective and critical engagement with theory”.

The two-year programme, the framework suggests, should include projects requiring teacher trainees to teach for short periods in schools -- to gain field experience.