In August 2023, the Supreme Court of India upheld the decision of the Rajasthan High Court in ruling that the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) degree cannot be considered appropriate for primary schoolteaching — the relevant degree for this level of school is the Diploma in Education (DEd) or Diploma in Elementary Education (DElEd) or Bachelor of Elementary Education (BElEd). Effectively, this nullified an earlier notification by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) that the BEd degree can be accepted. This may seem like a minor point with regards to a profession that is widely believed to not be very aspirational. But this is a decision that has wide implications for recruitment and policy — and rightly so.
Primary teaching has different requirements
Teaching young students in primary grades is quite different in its requirements when compared to being a subject teacher for middle and high school. Understanding Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN), and being able to design and involve all students in a manner that ensures that they grasp these basic and foundational competencies is a very non-trivial task. Almost all of us have forgotten how we learned to read or manipulate the number system. Hence, teaching these competencies has to be learnt by prospective primary schoolteachers, through specialised teacher education for this stage, i.e., the DEd, or DElEd or BElEd. It cannot be reconstructed through autobiographical memory; love for children and good communication skills are not enough, and by no means does the BEd degree, with its focus on teaching subjects to students in middle school upwards, prepare teachers for this. The Right to Education Act 2009, therefore, not only lay emphasis on the need for professional qualification but also the appropriate qualification to teach. Yet, 15 years later, we find that graduates with BEd qualification continue to be employed for this stage of school.
