In a relief to over 13,000 students and 17,000 in-service teachers, the HRD Ministry has granted retrospective recognition to teacher education courses conducted without approval from the National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE), Union Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ said on Friday.

“We have brought out gazette notification to regularize retrospectively certain teacher education programmes being conducted by some central and state government institutions. These programmes were being conducted without any formal recognition from NCTE,” Nishank said.

“It was brought to my notice that some of the institutions had inadvertently admitted students in teacher education courses which were not recognized by NCTE. This rendered invalid the qualification acquired by these students for the purposes of employment as school teachers,” it added.

The ministry clarified that amendment only allows retrospective recognition up to academic session 2017-2018, thereby only regularizing the qualifications acquired by students in the past. “It does not propose to leave it open for institutions to run unrecognized courses in future and thereafter approach for ex-post facto regularization,” an official said.

NCTE legally grants formal recognition to academic institutions for conducting any of the recognized courses meant for pre-service teacher education. It is only after qualifying any of these NCTE recognized courses that a person becomes legally eligible for appointment as a school teacher in India.