Council can seek appraisals from teachers' institues: SC

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court Thursday underscored the importance of the quality of teachers, who play a vital role in shaping the future of the country, and held National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) can seek annual performance appraisal report (PAR) from teacher education institutions (TEIs). A bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Alok Aradhe said the role of NCTE in ensuring quality education for children is immense and teacher education has assumed greater importance since right to education has been recognised as a fundamental right under Right to Education Act. The bench stressed that it is necessary for the council and its bodies to ensure accountability of educational institutions. It quashed the HC order which had found fault with the council's decision to seek PAR from TEIs. "We fail to understand how a regulatory measure of a statutory body, empowered to achieve planned and coordinated development of teacher education system in the country, could be restrained from calling upon TEIs to file PAR. ...it is but natural and incidental that NCTE would require the stakeholders to provide the necessary PAR," it said.