The Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry is planning to revamp the present two-year course in B.Ed in favour of 4-year integrated teacher training programme. In this regard, the ministry has even written to the National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE), so they can start working on this plan.

Finance Minister, Mr. Arun Jaitley, has already made this announcement in his budget speech. The 2018-19 budget clearly defined that the government is serious to uplift the status of education in the country and the extent to which they are willing to support.

To improve the quality and training of teacher, a special training programme for 13 lakh teachers has been introduced under the Right to Education.

The change to revamp 2 year B.Ed to 4 year integrated course in B.Ed is being done to ensure that only serious students opt for the teacher’s training programme by making it similar to engineering and medical programmes. So, now the students after passing Class 12th board exams have the option to join four-year integrated BA-B Ed or BSc-B Ed courses. The NCTE sources said that the revamped syllabus will be more practical-oriented and will be beneficial for the students.

NCTE is likely to submit the draft proposal by March, 2018 and ministry will also soon finalise the rules and regulations for the courses before the commencement of the 2018-19 academic session so that universities can opt for it and announce the admission schedule.

Though this is not the first change for B.Ed courses.

In 2014, the NCTE made some changes by increasing the duration of the B.Ed programme from one year to two years with major change in the curriculum. Taking a look at March 2016 reports, it is found that about 15 lakh students were pursuing teacher training courses, out of which only 4,000 were pursuing the integrated programme. So, it was quite obvious that the number of takers for the 2-year course after graduation were always much higher than the number opting for the integrated course.

DTE Maharashtra First To Hold Integrated B.Ed CET 2018

However, there is one Government which already made this change, much before the speech of Mr. Arun Jaitley. The Maharashtra Govt. is the first ever to conduct the Common Entrance Test (CET) for Integrated B.Ed programme. The MAH- BA B.Ed / B.Sc B.Ed CET 2018 is scheduled to be held on June 21, 2018. It is will be a computer based test. The exam will be held in the designated cities in Maharashtra.

The CET for Integrated B.Ed programme will consist of 100 MCQ questions of 100 marks. The candidates need to complete the exam in a duration of 01 hour and 30 minutes. There will be no negative marking for any incorrect answer. The exam will comprise of topics namely, General Knowledge (40 number of questions), Mental Ability (30 number of questions), Teaching Aptitude (30 number of questions).

Now, as far as the syllabus is concerned for CET, for the GK Section, the candidate need to prepare topics such as Basic General Knowledge, Books and Authors, Awards and Honors, Important National Days, Persons in News, Important Current Events, Science & Technology (upto Class 1th level), Various Inventions, History, Geography, Indian Civics and Economics, Indian Constitution in reference with Education.

For Mental Ability Section, focus on Reasoning Ability, Statements and Conclusions, Letter and Number Series, Analogy, Odd Man Out, Numerical Ability, Logical Problem, Coding-Decoding. For the last section, i.e., Teaching Aptitude cover the topics such as, Attitude towards education, students and teaching profession, Leadership Qualities, Emotional and Social Adjustment, Intra-personal relations and Intra-personal skills, General Awareness and Interest in Teaching.