The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), under the Ministry of Education, has launched a portal to streamline the recognition process of teacher education programmes for higher education institutes (HEI) and teacher education institutes (TEIs).
According to a press release, the portal automates the entire recognition certificate process, including inviting applications for courses and issuing recognition orders to inspect the educational institution. The applications for the recently launched 4 Year Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP) will be processed on this portal.
The portal is expected to bring a paradigm shift in the functioning of NCTE. It aims to provide an automated robust framework, enhancing accountability, transparency, and the ease of doing business. All communication from HEIs/TEIs regarding deficiencies will correspondingly have to be sent on the ITEP portal.
In its digital transformation journey, the government has launched several tech-driven projects in the education sector to make processes more efficient and convenient, reducing human error and ensuring inclusivity. In April, the Andhra Pradesh state government announced it would deploy facial recognition software to address teacher absenteeism. Teachers in government schools will have to record their attendance twice a day through the system. The initiative is expected to reach nearly 189,000 teachers. The government said that this step was to ensure that there is accountability and discipline in the state-run institutions. The system will send an attendance alert to administrative officials via SMS telling them whether the teacher is present or absent from school. Parents will also receive SMS updates on their children’s arrival and departure from school.
The government is also using technology to address the teacher shortage the country is currently facing. Artificial intelligence-enabled programmes and learning apps can help teachers guide and train students based on their specific requirements. For example, the state of Telangana plans to use AI cameras to collect and analyse school-related data. When assessing a student, teachers are generally able to tell the level of a student’s engagement in the subject through body language, expressions, attentiveness, and the kind of questions they ask in the class. The AI-based camera system and model will be able to assess the students on these attributes. It will generate a report that the teachers can use to plan additional support for the students who are graded low. The teacher can validate the recommendations and the algorithm will learn from that.
Apart from using technology in educational administration, the government wants to improve the rate of digital literacy and help the country’s youth adapt to the job market, where the demand for technology experts is growing. Earlier this month, the Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) and the Indian Institute of Technology of Delhi (IIT- Delhi) announced they will jointly design a curriculum for schools that include robotics, AI, machine learning, and data science. The curriculum is for grades 9 to 12 in schools affiliated with the CISCE board.
IIT-Delhi’s technology innovation hub, I-Hub Foundation for Cobotics (IHFC), and CISCE signed a memorandum to carry out the project. IHFC would help CISCE upgrade the syllabus to reinforce 21st-century skills and achieve targets set out in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
