An array of educational institutes have identified a business opportunity in providing leadership training to their faculty. Many of the principals’ and teachers are gearing up to improve their leadership skills.

Prachi Gharpure, Principal, Sardar Patel Institute of Technology believes that she is not equipped in handling diverse set of faculty at the institute. She now has a guide in the Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) and Wipro Technologies’ Mission 10X.

Initiatives in India to develop academic leadership

Recently Harvard Business Publishing, an affiliate of HBS has joined hands with Mission 10X, Wipro’s non profit trust, to introduce advanced academic leadership workshop. The objective of the workshop is to provide training to principals of engineering colleges and improve their leadership skills.

The need for teacher training in India

Statistics shows that 47 per cent of the principals in engineering colleges come from rural India and so the workshop launched by the HBP and Wipro will be welcomed majority in the sector.

HBP and Wipro are not the only ones ho have realized the need for such training in India. There are many others who have felt the need for such an initiative, even though it is not considered as a profitable business. Players such as Core Education and Technologies, Educomp Solutions, ISB sees opportunity in the segment.

In India we face shortage with teachers in primary, secondary and higher education levels. At the primary education level, there is a shortage of .7 million teachers. The secondary education level faces a shortage of 1.2 million, and the higher education level has a deficiency of .3 million teachers. This gives large opportunity for the players who provide training for the teachers.

The result of shortage

The shortage of teachers in India has restricted the institutions from meeting the guidelines set by the respective regulating authorities. In India there are 17,000 colleges, 342 universities and 13 other IIT’s. The number of higher education institutions is set to increase in the coming years as the demand is increasing at a rapid rate. So the need for qualified teachers is going to increase with the increase in the number of institutions.

Teacher training limited to BEd courses

In India teacher training is limited to B.Ed (Bachelors of Education) courses and so none of the teachers in the professional institutions in India have undergone a formal teacher training. So they do not know whatthe students wanted, their background and their requirements. According to Lalitha Chacko from The Teacher Foundation, they have framed a programme that will consider issues such as how faculty can be proactive, assess and evaluate student performance.

Success stories in India

The Teacher Foundation, a not-for-profit organization has been providing teacher training for quite long ad has trained about 18,500 teachers. It offers Cambridge International Diploma for Teachers and Trainers, and is affiliated to the University of Cambridge International Examinations, UK. The Teacher Foundation offers the course in collaboration with the British Council, Chennai. Ms. Chacko said that there is lot many qualified professionals who want to become teachers, and the course offered by the foundation is targeted to help them pursue a career as a teacher. Along with the teacher training, they also train teachers on soft skills, which enable them to understand the students better.

As of now more then 18500 teachers from across 1000 engineering colleges in 25 states across India has been trained by Mission10X. In our country there are no properly structured frameworks for academic leadership, and that is how Mission 10X was set up to fill the gaps. Mission 10X carry out the programme through discussions, role plays and simulations.

Outdated BE.d framework

Experts in Education sector says that the current B.Ed course framework is outdated and need a total restructuring. Moreover the present courses do not make use of technology in making teaching effective. The teachers do not agree to the fact that training can occur beyond B.Ed too. Once they get into the profession, they never go for further training to keep updated.

Teacher training as a separate sector

Teacher training should be considered as a separate sector, as there is acute shortage for qualified teachers. As in the case of organizations, educational institutions should also send their faculty for further education to keep up with the changes happening around them in the education sector. With out such an effort from the part of the educational institutions, even if they are able meet quantity targets, quality will suffer.

Challenges faced by the education sector

One of the challenges that the education sector faces is with getting the teachers adapted to technology. There is an urgent need to change the mindset of the teachers, because it is one of the important factors that prevent them from changing for good. It is observed that teachers do not go out and learn from others.

Core Education and Technologies Ltd has joined hands with JJ School of Arts for the last one and a half years. With the assistance of Ministry of Human Resource and Development, it has introduced its trial programme to train teachers at different central schools for the past few months. Core has trained about 1,500 teachers from about 100 schools.

Chief Executive Officer of Core has said that they are working on teacher competency framework and related issues, which will help governments’ to develop their own mapping tool. This is essential as teachers come from different backgrounds and so their output should be synchronized.

The initiatives of different organizations have started to pay off. Most of the teachers who have undergone training say that they have started to take classes in an interactive manner which improves student learning. The training has also helped teachers to evaluate students in a better and fair manner.

Before the training, faculty meetings used to end up without results, but now teachers put forward agendas and ensure that they are met.

So as the success stories of teacher training spreads, we can expect that more and more institutions and teachers come forward to undergo training. This will enhance the leadership of the teachers and ultimately result in enhanced learning among students.