The state has about 300 teacher education colleges, with the capacity of graduating 30,000 teachers every year. A majority of these colleges are also resorting to malpractices-allowing students to register for the programme at a fee and collecting certificates at the end of the year without attending any classes.
To overcome this, we need a high quality teacher educators. The vicious cycle of poor quality in service teacher development begins with the absence of high quality teacher educators. If the existence capacity of over 3 lakh teachers has to be enhanced, the state must develop at least 500 high quality teacher educators, who would effectively be responsible for this responsibility.
Education functionaries need to be well equipped. The state has around 7,500 functionaries who are responsible for supporting the schools from outside-ensuring quality infrastructure, maintaining the right teacher-pupil ratio and facilitating a smooth flow of incentives, textbooks, midday meals etc.
The government must ensure that the already-launched management development programme covers all education functionaries, enabling them to have the necessary education perspective, competencies in their respective roles and the social orientation to deal with children emerging from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.
However, another positive development is the establishment of bodies like the Karnataka State Knowledge Commission and the Vision Group in Science and Technology, with compulsory to contribute to quality education.