New Delhi, April 2: Getting admitted to teachers’ training colleges may not be so easy in future. Candidates may have to establish that they want to be in a classroom and are not wandering into it by chance.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) wants the government to introduce a psychological test to assess candidates’ aptitude for teaching before they are admitted to BEd courses.

Candidates are now taken in on the basis of their scores in school-leaving or graduation exams. Nor are they really tested when they take up a job. Private and government schools just conduct interviews.

Educators say there’s a crisis in the quality of teaching. Despite a high enrolment rate, students are learning practically nothing even after completing classes V and VI. Even those teachers who regularly take classes are not able to communicate with the students.

“We believe that candidates for teaching courses should be screened,” says an educator. He cites the question papers set by the Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management.

“Those students are tested for their skill at logical reasoning and critical thinking. Similarly, we should test our future teachers’ aptitude for teaching and their love of children.”

The Union human resource development (HRD) ministry and educators are concerned at the lack of skill among a large chunk of teachers. While school curricula and examination systems have undergone a revamp, classrooms are still sticking to dated modes of teaching.

In a draft for a discussion on reforming the teacher education system, the NCERT says: “If schoolteachers are expected to bring about a revolution in their approach to teaching, that same revolution must precede and find a place in the colleges of education.”

The colleges of education now function just as many private professional colleges do — they lack the expertise or infrastructure to equip trainees with any kind of teaching skills.

“There has been a massive commercialisation of teacher education, as in professional courses. Teacher education is now virtually an industry,” a policymaker said.

In Bhopal city alone there are about 100 BEd colleges. There are 200 in the stretch connecting Meerut, Ghaziabad, Noida and Delhi.

“The teacher education institutes merely fulfil the formality of completing the prescribed number of ‘lesson plans’ with little concern for preparing teachers for the constantly demanding and fluid classroom situations,” the NCERT says.

The courses are run at two levels — pre-service and in-service.

The pre-service models include a one-year BEd course, a four-year integrated course, and a two-year distance learning course. Each stipulates a minimum internship period that includes 30-40 lessons in a classroom.

The in-service courses are run by state governments, most of whom are not serious about the task. In 1995, the HRD ministry had introduced a district primary education programme (DPEP) that required states to set up centres with the explicit mandate of training in-service teachers.

Many states looked the other way.

The NCERT says that Bengal, for instance, is yet to fully operationalise the scheme. Tamil Nadu, usually a good performer in education and health, too, has failed to implement the DPEP.