ROLE OF S.C.E.R.T IN PROMOTING QUALITY TEACHER EDUCATION

INTRODUCTION

State Council for Educational and Training (SCERT) is an apex body, responsible for quality education in the state. The State Institute of Education (SIE), which functioned as a part of the department of general education, was converted to form the SCERT, to give a new thrust and direction to school education. SCERT, Kerala, was established in 1994.

 It is an autonomous body entrusted with planning, implementation and evaluation of all academic programs from pre-school to higher secondary levels. SCERT is concerned with academic aspects of school education including formulation of curriculum, preparation of textbooks, teacher’s handbooks and teacher training. It advises the Government on policy matters relating to school education.
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SCERT is closely associated with, Regional Institute of Education, Mysore, The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), New Delhi, The National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), New Delhi, The Regional Institute of English, Bangalore, UNICEF and UNFPA, Universities in Kerala etc.

KEY FUNCTIONS OF SCERT 

WORKSHOPS

In workshops, the approach is more practical than a seminar. All the participants participate actively and make a significant contribution. A workshop is organized to consider intensively practical problems of class room teaching like lesson planning, curriculum construction etc.

WORKSHOP FOR VOCATIONAL TEACHERS

The workshop was intended to orient teachers with the preparation of pools of questions based on activity-based approach.19 vocational subject representatives participated in the workshop. One set of question paper in each subject was prepared at the end of the workshop.

WORKSHOP FOR PREPARATION OF SAMPLE QUESTION PAPER AND GUIDELINE

A workshop for the development of sample question paper and guideline for question paper setters of Std. X (for special schools) for all the subjects was prepared. The same was handed over to Secretary, Pareeksha Bhavan.

TRAINING COORDINATION

DTE (Department of Teacher Education)’s areas of action are organizing teacher training programmes (both in-service and pre-service) for the TTI’s and DIET’s.

TRAINING ON ADOLESCENT HEALTH EDUCATION PROGRAMME (AHEP)

The workshop for the development of module for conducted from 25-27 August 2011. As a continuation the training for empowering the DRU faculty of DIET on AHEP was teacher educators of TTI’s covering all the districts of Kerala is to be conducted in Kozhikode, Kottayam, Thrissur, Kollam and Ernakulum on 20 December 2011 and would be completed by 13 January 2012.

ADVOCASY PROGRAMME FOR PRINCIPALS OF B.Ed. COLLEGES.

A one-day meeting was convened for the principals of B.Ed. colleges to make them aware of the importance of the relevance and need for population education. The main discussion was the adolescence issues and concerns.

 HIGHER SECONDARY SRG TRAINING

SRG Training for Higher Secondary teachers for the year 2011-2012 was conducted at various centers. Training was conducted for 17 major subjects. The batches were of 50, 60 and 100 members for different subjects and it was a 3-day programme. The topic generally discussed in all subjects was guidance and counseling, career development, and how to conduct cluster effectively and ICT-based model classroom.

NTEC/PRE-PRIMARY TEACHER

It is a comprehensive course envisaged for equipping aspirants to become new millennium Pre-school/ Nursery teacher. This is a systematic course dealing with major areas of child developments such as Elementary education-Sociological and philosophical foundations, Child development and psychology, health, Practical and training.

ICT TRAINING FOR HIGHER SECONDARY SCHOOL HINDI TEACHERS

ICT- based training is an area much desirable for Hindi teachers. ICT training for Higher Secondary Hindi teachers of the state was held from 21.02.2012 to 08.03. 9 Core SRG members and total of 400 SRG provided members attended from 14 districts. The programme classes on File creation, Hindi Devanagari typing, mail creating, e-mail sending, slide making and Blog creating. These teachers will impart training at cluster level.

PROGRAMMES

GUIDANCE AND COUNCELLING

Future teachers should be equipped to systematically plan and organize school guidance and counseling programmes. Hence it was decided to review the pre-service teacher education curriculum at the primary level for the guidance and counseling components. The objectives were to examine, review, and analyze the current curriculum and to identify curriculum redundancies and make suggestions for updating curriculum based on the needs of students or bench marks.

COMPREHENSIVE TEACHER TRANSFORMATION PROGRAMME

 To enhance quality of teachers, empowerment programme on novel ideas, transactional modalities and development are essential. In order to satisfy these needs, all the teachers of the state from primary to secondary level will be trained for two months in 3 phases.

Phase I Empowerment programme on personality development and ICT skills.

Preparation of module………Rs. 8, 11,500

Training of trainers (TOT) …Rs. 59, 13,000

Actual teacher training….Rs. 10, 62, 65,000

Phase II Empowerment programme for effective transaction of the content and pedagogical inputs.

Preparation of module………Rs. 63, 94.500

Training of trainers (TOT).Rs. 1, 88, 19,000

Actual teacher training….Rs. 28, 69, 42,500

Phase III Booster empowerment programme focused on solving issues and problems during the implementation stage.

Preparation of module………Rs. 63, 94,500

Training of trainers….Rs.1, 88, 19,000

Actual teacher training …Rs. 17, 51, 08,500

GRAND TOTAL ………Rs. 62, 54, 67,500.

URDU ORIENTATION COURSE

Moulana Azad National Urdu University and SCERT together conducted an orientation programme (12.09.2011-17.09.2011) at Urdu University campus, Hyderabad.  Sri. N. Mouthin Kutty was the programme coordinator. The main aim of the programme was to provide guidance for all Kerala Urdu teachers.

ENGLISH THEATRE CLUBS IN KERALA SCHOOLS

A proposal by SCERT to the state government is that every school in the state will have an English Theatre Club soon. The club is being planned to give an opportunity to teachers and students to watch and appreciate good English films. This is as the SCERT has termed it, to equip learners and teachers with good English skills.

RESEARCH

SCERT is responsible for research on various topics related to school education like curriculum development, training needs assessment for teachers, etc. SCERT conducted a research study based on the First Terminal Evaluation conducted in 2011.      With the guidance of educational experts in the field, tools of the study were prepared and data were collected, analyzed and the study report was prepared in consecutive three workshops.

FINDING OF THE STUDY

According to Head teachers and teachers the question pools prepared by SCERT were of good quality and Students also welcomed the idea of Question pool. The pool helped to prepare the question papers in an effective manner. Most of the question papers considered the multilevel learner and the questions were prepared considering the process skills.

PREPARATION OF SCHOOL CURRICULUM AND TEXTBOOKS

DEPARTMENT OF CURRICULAM, TEXTBOOKS AND EVALUATION is responsible for preparation and revision of curriculum and textbooks, preparation of handbooks for teachers in eight languages and different school subjects for all classes.,. Faculties under the Departments of Curriculum, Textbooks and Evaluation are Malayalam, English, Hindi, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Geography, Social Science, Arabic, Urdu, Sanskrit, Kannada, and Tamil. This prepares textbooks for class I to XII. Also prepare Syllabus of Technical Special Schools and Special School.

GUJARATI TEXTBOOKS

SCERT has developed Gujarati textbooks for class 8, 9 and 10 for the first time in the history of school education in Kerala. Previously, the textbooks in use were drawn from Department of Education, Gujarat. The curriculum committee decided to introduce state own textbooks in Gujarati. Accordingly textbooks were developed on the basis of guidelines introduced from the academic year 2012-13.

KERALA CURRICULAM FRAMEWORK-2007

The curriculum revision programme in Kerala was conceptualized on the basis National Curriculum Framework (NCF-2005). But there should be reforms in the methodology of learning, infrastructure facilities, teacher intervention strategies, approach of different subjects, course design, text books, teachers’ handbook and evaluation. The draft framework of the proposed curriculum formed on the basis of the studies conducted by 14 focus groups and with the discussions of the core group. SCERT publishes the draft of the curriculum framework in  internet which is helpful for receiving opinions of peoples and submit this document before curriculum committee.

KERALA TEACHER ELIGIBILITY TEST (K-TET)

The implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009 requires the recruitment of a large number of teachers across the country in a time bound manner. It also directs the states to ensure that quality requirement for recruitment of teachers is not diluted at any cost.

Hence the essential qualification for a person to be eligible for appointment as a teacher (clause (n) of section 2 of the RTE Act) is that he/she should pass TET.

v    It would bring national standards and benchmark of teacher quality in the recruitment process.

v    It would induce teacher education institutions and students from these institutions to further improve their performance standards.

v    It would send a positive signal to all stakeholders that the Government lays special emphasis on teacher quality.          

The test will be for three categories;

1. Lower Primary classes (Category I)

2. Upper Primary classes (Category II)

3. High School classes (Category III)

PROJECTS

Department of Educational Technology is working in association with IT@ School project, SIET etc. It gives academic leadership for the training of IT Master Trainers and School IT Coordinators to implement IT education in schools, using computers as a tool for acquiring and using information and knowledge. Development of story board for resource CDs for various subjects in high school classes ii another contribution.

OTHER FUNCTIONS

LIBRARY: SCERT maintains a modern research and reference      library with high emphasis on education and its             allied subjects. The mission is to build up a relevant collection of information materials and timely dissemination of information to educators,     educationalists, researchers, students and other stakeholders in the field of education.

PREPARATION OF INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS: SCERT provide Teachers Handbook and Resource C.D. for Special schools. For students having hearing disabilities, visual learning is more helpful for them. Hence SCERT made teachers handbook and resource C.D. containing visualization of all subjects in accordance with the special school curriculum.

REFRESHER COURSE: It is an important in –service training for teachers. The main purpose is to enable the teachers to keep abreast of the latest developments in their subjects as in theory and practices of education. It includes refresher course, orientation & training programs for              teachers, headmasters, DEOs &DDEs on curriculum-related topics.

CONFERENCES: It can be organized on subjects of practical interest, such as revision of school curriculum, selection of text books, and report of successful educational experiments.

STUDY GROUPS: Teachers of different subjects can form study group which may meet once a week.

SCHOOL PROGRAMMES: This includes club meeting, faculty meeting, study circles, exhibitions in the school, experimental projects, film shows, demonstration lessons etc.

STUDY OF PROFESSIONAL WRITING: Teachers can study various publications of SCERT, NCERT, Extension service departments of colleges to acquaint with the latest research findings.

MISCELLANEOUS PROGRAMMES: This includes educational tours, visits to places of educational importance and teacher exchange programmes can be organized for professional growth of teachers.

CONCLUSION

Quality teachers are the assets of a school. Teacher empowerment has got new dimensions in our country owing to the vision put forth by National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for making teacher education more sensitive to the merging demand of the school system. SCERT has important role in this area. For all academic purposes SCERT functions as an autonomous body.  SCERT, at the state level will carry out all those activities as counterpart of NCERT for the qualitative improvement of education in the state. These includes workshops, seminars, trainings, cluster meetings, refresher courses, comprehensive teacher empowerment programmes, researches, research grants, awards and scholarships for teachers.

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