Teacher education: pre-service, in-service and…

Core facts

Two stages:
- Pre-service: professional preparation before entering the job;
- In-service: professional development of working teachers (also called continuing professional development, CPD).
Professional preparation and professional development of teachers is a continuous process (NPE 1986 and NCFTE 2009: pre-service and in-service are inseparable).
Purpose of workshops, seminars and conferences for teachers: in-service professional development.
Tagore: "A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame": the teacher must go on learning continuously (asked 2019 and 2022); another form of the same idea: a teacher can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. The teacher is a lifelong learner.
Wood's Despatch (1854) was the first to stress teacher training as a pre-requisite of an efficient education system (2019 key): training schools in every presidency.
Pre-service courses:
- D.El.Ed. (Diploma in Elementary Education, earlier TTC / D.Ed.): 2 years after Class 12, for primary teachers;
- B.Ed.: 2 years after graduation (since 2015-16, NCTE Regulations 2014; one year earlier);
- M.Ed.: 2 years; for teacher educators;
- ITEP (Integrated Teacher Education Programme, NEP 2020): 4-year dual-major B.A./B.Sc./B.Com. B.Ed.
Micro-teaching: a scaled-down teaching act (one skill, 5-10 pupils, 5-10 minutes) for pre-service training; developed at Stanford University in 1963; Indian model cycle = 36 minutes; joining single skills into one lesson = link practice (2019 key).
NCTE (National Council for Teacher Education):
- 1973: set up as an advisory body (housed in NCERT);
- NCTE Act, 1993; became statutory on 17 August 1995;
- HQ New Delhi; four regional committees: Jaipur (north), Bengaluru (south), Bhubaneswar (east), Bhopal (west);
- Recognises teacher education institutions, sets norms, and lays down minimum qualifications of teachers, including the TET (2010, under RTE Act Section 23).
OTPRMS (Online Teacher Pupil Registration Management System): NCTE's portal that registers pupil-teachers and issues their OTPRMS certificates; NCTE works under the Ministry of Education (the old MHRD, which the 2025 key called "Ministry of Human Resources").
NCFTE 2009: National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education, by NCTE, subtitled Towards Preparing Professional and Humane Teacher; teacher as a reflective practitioner.
NCFTE 2009, in-service design: take a contextual and pedagogic approach and treat teachers as (adult) learners, not as passive receivers of instructions.
NCERT: set up 1 September 1961 (a registered society), New Delhi; academic advisor to the Ministry of Education.
Regional Colleges of Education (NCERT, 1963): Ajmer, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Mysuru; renamed Regional Institutes of Education (RIE) in 1995, when NERIE Shillong was added. Each has its own experimental (demonstration multipurpose) school, runs a 4-year integrated degree-cum-B.Ed. course and is a centre of in-service courses. RIE Mysuru serves the southern states, AP included.
Restructuring and Reorganisation of Teacher Education (centrally sponsored scheme, 1987-88, after NPE 1986):
- DIET (District Institute of Education and Training): one per district, elementary teachers, pre-service and in-service; also supports non-formal and adult education instructors;
- CTE (College of Teacher Education): upgraded secondary training colleges, secondary teachers;
- IASE (Institute of Advanced Study in Education): advanced courses (M.Ed., research), training of teacher educators and secondary teachers;
- SCERT strengthened as the state's academic authority.
SCERT (State Council of Educational Research and Training): the state-level counterpart of NCERT; textbooks, curriculum, teacher training (APPSC's 2025 key matched SCERT with 1969).
Years to match (2025 paper): UGC 1956 (statutory), RCI 1992 (Act), NCTE 1995 (statutory), SCERT 1969 (key). Solve such items by elimination: fix the three sure years first.
Funding of in-service training: mainly through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (2001), the main vehicle of the RTE Act; since 2018 through Samagra Shiksha (SSA + RMSA + Teacher Education merged).
NISHTHA (National Initiative for School Heads' and Teachers' Holistic Advancement): 21 August 2019, integrated in-service training of elementary teachers.
Teacher's ethics in the 2019 paper: to be credible in valuing answer scripts a teacher must be objective, and must refuse a colleague's request for favour; the most important people for a teacher are the students.
Famous lines:
- Kothari Commission (1964-66): "The destiny of India is now being shaped in her classrooms"; of all factors in quality of education, the quality, competence and character of teachers matter most;
- NPE 1986: no people can rise above the level of its teachers.

Explained

1. Pre-service vs in-service.

Point	Pre-service	In-service
When	before appointment	during the career
Aim	preparation; basic competence	updating, growth, remedying gaps
Form	full-time course with internship	short courses, workshops, online
Institutions	DIET, B.Ed. colleges, CTE, IASE, RIE	DIET, BRC, CRC, SCERT, RIE

2. Modes of in-service education. Orientation courses (for a new curriculum or textbook), refresher courses, workshops (learning by doing, producing material), seminars and conferences (sharing papers), summer institutes, extension lectures, study circles and teacher clubs, demonstration lessons, exchange visits, action research, correspondence and online courses (DIKSHA, 2017; SWAYAM). At the grass roots, Block Resource Centres (BRC) and Cluster Resource Centres (CRC) (from DPEP and SSA) give on-site academic support; a monthly cluster meeting of teachers of nearby schools is in-service support. A teacher returning from an in-service course would rightly choose a book on innovative instructional strategies (2019 paper).

3. Why in-service education is needed. New knowledge and curricula (NCF 2005, NEP 2020), new methods (activity-based, ICT), new laws (RTE 2009), gaps in pre-service training, and the need to keep up motivation and professional identity. The BRAOU text adds two old suggestions: make teaching in schools part of a teacher trainer's duty, and set up an in-service training centre in every district so that every teacher with five years of service gets retrained.

4. How Indian teacher education grew.

Year	Event
1793	Danish missionaries' normal school at Serampore, often called India's first
1854	Wood's Despatch: first official stress on teacher training; training schools in each presidency, stipends for pupil-teachers
1856	Government Normal School, Saidapet (Madras), later the first teachers' college
1882	Hunter Commission: normal schools for primary teachers
1904	Curzon's Resolution on training of secondary teachers
1952-53	Mudaliar Commission: training colleges affiliated to universities; Extension Services Departments (1955) for in-service
1964-66	Kothari Commission: end the isolation of teacher education, internship in place of mere practice teaching, comprehensive colleges
1983-85	Chattopadhyaya (National Commission on Teachers): 4-year integrated course after Class 12
1986	NPE: DIETs, continuous teacher education
1995	NCTE statutory
2012	Justice J.S. Verma Commission (set up on the Supreme Court's order) on teacher education quality
2014	NCTE Regulations: 2-year B.Ed. and M.Ed., integrated courses
2020	NEP 2020: ITEP, NPST, 50 hours of CPD a year

5. The DIET in detail. A DIET has seven branches: PSTE (pre-service teacher education), IFIC (in-service programmes, field interaction and innovation coordination), DRU (district resource unit, for adult and non-formal education), CMDE (curriculum, material development and evaluation), ET (educational technology), P&M (planning and management) and WE (work experience). It runs D.El.Ed., trains working teachers, supports BRCs and CRCs, and does action research for the district. NPE 1986's reason for one institution doing both jobs: staff development begins in pre-service and is reinforced in-service. In a state, the Director of Teacher Education (or SCERT) controls the DIETs.

6. NCFTE 2009 in brief.

Three curricular areas: Foundations of Education, Curriculum and Pedagogy, School Internship.
Teacher as a reflective practitioner who builds on children's experience (in line with NCF 2005), not a transmitter of information.
Longer, supervised internship; integration of theory and practice; teacher education inside universities and multidisciplinary settings.
In-service: decentralised, need-based, context-specific, treating teachers as active adult learners.
Earlier frameworks: NCTE 1978, 1988, 1998 (Curriculum Framework for Quality Teacher Education).

7. NEP 2020 on teachers (Chapter 15 and Chapter 5).

ITEP (4-year integrated B.Ed.) to be the minimum qualification for school teachers by 2030; notified by NCTE in 2021, first batches in 2023-24; admission through NCET (National Common Entrance Test) held by NTA.
2-year B.Ed. for graduates; 1-year B.Ed. for those with a 4-year bachelor's or a master's degree.
Stand-alone, substandard teacher education institutions to close; teacher education to move into multidisciplinary colleges and universities.
NPST (National Professional Standards for Teachers) and a new NCFTE to be framed by NCTE with NCERT.
50 hours of CPD a year for every teacher; a National Mission for Mentoring (senior and retired faculty guide teachers).
NCTE to become a Professional Standard Setting Body under the proposed Higher Education Commission of India.

8. Micro-teaching.

Origin: Stanford University, USA, 1963 (Dwight W. Allen and colleagues); taken up in Indian B.Ed. and D.El.Ed. courses from the 1970s, with an Indian model worked out under NCERT.
Scaled down: one teaching skill at a time, 5-10 pupils (or peers), a lesson of 5-10 minutes, immediate feedback.
Cycle: plan → teach → feedback → re-plan → re-teach → re-feedback.

Step (Indian model)	Minutes
Teach	6
Feedback	6
Re-plan	12
Re-teach	6
Re-feedback	6
One full cycle	36

Common skills: introducing a lesson (set induction), questioning (fluency, probing), explaining, illustrating with examples, stimulus variation, reinforcement, using the blackboard, closure.
Link practice: after mastering single skills, the trainee integrates several skills in a short lesson; this bridges micro-teaching and real class teaching.

9. Programmes of 1987-2001 that trained teachers (BRAOU, Unit 13).

Programme	Year	Teacher-training point
Operation Blackboard	1987	100% central aid for a second teacher in single-teacher schools; later a third teacher where enrolment passed 100
SOPT (Special Orientation Programme for Primary Teachers)	1990s	use of Operation Blackboard materials and Minimum Levels of Learning (MLL); over 14 lakh teachers oriented (book figure)
DPEP (District Primary Education Programme)	1994	World Bank and European Union aid, 85% external through the Centre, 15% State; set up BRCs and CRCs; trained about 10 lakh teachers
SSA / RMSA	2001 / 2009	SSA funded elementary in-service training; RMSA's quality inputs included in-service training of secondary teachers

Under the 1987-88 scheme the book counts about 461 DIETs, 85 CTEs and 37 IASEs sanctioned (figures of its time).

10. Training teachers of children with disabilities (BRAOU, Unit 17).

Kothari Commission estimated about 16,500 teachers needed for blind, deaf and mentally retarded children, assuming a pupil-teacher ratio of 10:1.
NPE 1986 task force: disability-wise training of special teachers through UGC, NCERT, Regional Colleges of Education, National Institutes and university departments of special education; in-service courses through regional centres with SCERTs.
POA 1992: education of children with disabilities to be part of the pedagogy of pre-service teacher training.
Grant-in-aid to voluntary agencies only if they appoint trained teachers or get them trained within three years of appointment.
RCI ran a national Bridge Course for in-service special teachers.

11. Professional ethics and teachers' organisations.

Teaching as a profession needs specialised knowledge, long preparation, a code of ethics and lifelong learning. NCTE prepared a Code of Professional Ethics for School Teachers (2010) with teachers' associations: duties towards students, parents, community, colleagues and the profession.
RTE Act 2009: Section 24 lists teachers' duties (regularity, completing the curriculum, assessing each child, parent meetings); Section 28 bars teachers from private tuition.
Valuation: fairness and objectivity; no favour to anyone.
Teachers' organisations protect service conditions, give a voice in policy, and support professional growth through journals, seminars and in-service courses. National examples: All India Primary Teachers' Federation (AIPTF), All India Federation of Teachers' Organisations (AIFTO), AIFUCTO (university and college teachers); in AP, unions such as APTF, UTF, PRTU and STU.
Teachers' Day: 5 September (birthday of Dr S. Radhakrishnan); World Teachers' Day: 5 October (UNESCO).

AP angle

Admissions: AP EdCET (B.Ed.) is held for APSCHE by a state university; AP DEECET admits candidates to D.El.Ed.
Eligibility and recruitment: APTET (since 2011) is the eligibility test; teachers are recruited through the DSC (District Selection Committee) examination; the CTET is held by CBSE.
AP institutions: the SCERT, Andhra Pradesh writes state textbooks and teacher modules; every district has a DIET; secondary teacher education is done by government CTEs, IASEs and B.Ed. colleges, with RIE Mysuru as the NCERT regional centre.
Telugu Akademi publishes the bilingual D.El.Ed. and B.Ed. textbooks used in AP.

Common traps

✗ "NCTE was set up in 1973 as a statutory body." ✓ 1973 advisory; statutory in 1995 (Act of 1993).
✗ "NCERT was set up in 1995." ✓ NCERT 1961; 1995 is NCTE's statutory year and the renaming of RCEs as RIEs.
✗ "DIETs train secondary teachers." ✓ DIETs are for elementary teachers; CTEs and IASEs for secondary.
✗ "RIEs have model primary schools only." ✓ Each RIE has an experimental (demonstration multipurpose) school.
✗ "Teacher development is a short-term process." ✓ It is continuous.
✗ "NCFTE 2009 bases in-service design on subject expertise or educational attainment." ✓ It stresses the contextual and pedagogic approach and teachers as learners.
✗ "NCFTE was prepared by NCERT." ✓ NCFTE is NCTE's; NCF 2005 (school curriculum) is NCERT's.
✗ "UGC was founded in 1953, so the match is 1953." ✓ UGC was inaugurated in 1953 but became statutory in 1956; papers use 1956.
✗ "Integrating several teaching skills is the re-teach session." ✓ It is link practice; re-teach is one step of the single-skill cycle.
✗ "Micro-teaching began in India; one cycle is 30 or 42 minutes." ✓ Stanford, 1963; the Indian model cycle is 36 minutes (6+6+12+6+6).
✗ "The first stress on teacher education came from the Hunter or Sadler Commission." ✓ Wood's Despatch, 1854 (2019 key).
✗ "OTPRMS belongs to the Skill Development or Labour Ministry." ✓ It is NCTE's portal under the Ministry of Education (formerly MHRD; the 2025 key printed "Ministry of Human Resources").
✗ "NIEPA is a constituent unit of NCERT." ✓ NIEPA is a separate deemed university; NCERT's units are NIE, CIET, PSSCIVE and the RIEs.

Quick revision

Pre-service = preparation; in-service = continuous professional development; workshops and seminars = in-service.
Tagore's lamp: teacher keeps learning; Wood's Despatch 1854 first stressed teacher training.
NCTE: 1973 advisory; Act 1993; statutory 17 Aug 1995; 4 regional committees; OTPRMS is NCTE's.
NCERT 1 Sep 1961; RCEs 1963 (Ajmer, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Mysuru) → RIEs 1995, experimental schools.
1987-88 scheme: DIET (elementary, 7 branches incl. DRU), CTE and IASE (secondary), SCERT.
Micro-teaching: Stanford 1963; Indian cycle 36 min; link practice integrates skills.
NCFTE 2009 (NCTE): reflective practitioner; contextual approach; teachers as learners.
B.Ed. 2 years since 2015; ITEP 4 years, minimum qualification by 2030; 50 hours CPD.
In-service funded by SSA (2001) → Samagra Shiksha (2018); NISHTHA 2019; DPEP 1994 BRC/CRC.
Kothari: destiny shaped in classrooms; NPE 1986: no people rise above their teachers.

Go deeper: Deeper, Mains writing (beyond what APPSC Paper I usually asks)

Deeper Advanced

1. The isolation problem. The Kothari Commission said teacher education was isolated in three ways: from universities, from schools and from other teacher training institutions. Its remedies (university departments of education, practising schools, comprehensive colleges with all levels together) still shape NEP 2020's push for multidisciplinary institutions and ITEP.

2. Quality and regulation. In the 2000s the number of private B.Ed. and D.El.Ed. colleges grew very fast, many with no real faculty or practice teaching. The Justice Verma Commission (2012) found this and asked for stronger regulation, longer courses and a role for universities; NCTE's 2014 Regulations and the TET were the response. TET pass rates have often been low, showing a gap between degree and competence.

3. Cascade training. Much in-service training reaches teachers through a cascade (state → district → block → cluster). Messages get diluted at each level. NCFTE 2009 and NISHTHA try to fix this with on-site support, school-based training and teacher-chosen online courses.

4. Teacher as professional. Professionalisation means a body of specialised knowledge, long preparation, a code of ethics, autonomy and continuous growth. Teaching in India shows all of these on paper but not always in practice (contract teachers, para-teachers, non-teaching duties). The BRAOU text adds that many secondary teachers are still untrained and that vocationalisation needs vocationally trained teachers.

Mains writing Mains writing

Frame: a teacher is made over a career, not in a course; India has the institutions (NCTE, NCERT, SCERT, DIET), but quality and continuity lag.
Analysis points:
- Pre-service quality suffered from commercial colleges; ITEP and multidisciplinary campuses are the fix;
- In-service training is frequent but often not needs-based;
- DIETs are under-staffed in many states.
Way forward: fill DIET faculty posts, school-based mentoring, CPD linked to career growth (NPST), use of DIKSHA with face-to-face support, and teacher voice in designing training.

Medha AI writes its own notes and checks them against the sources listed. Medha AI is an independent preparation service. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to APPSC, TSPSC, MPSC, UPSC or any other commission or government body.

11.1.1 Teacher education: pre-service, in-service and institutions

Download this PDF