Ad hoc changes to National College of Education admission policy

Legitimate expectation of prospective students breached? 

Applications have been called for the admission of students to National Colleges of Education by Gazette notification dated 15 March 2024. Students who passed the A Level exam in 2021 and 2022 are eligible to apply. This time two important changes have been introduced to the admission policy.

CHANGE - 1

The admission of students which was hundred percent based on district basis has now been made fifty percent based on national level and fifty percent based on district level.

CHANGE - 2

The number of students admitted to NCOE has been drastically reduced this time. This is unprecedented in the history of NCOE admission. The admission number used to increase but it never decreased. The number of students who are to be admitted from the 2021 A Level batch is only 2606 and the number of students who are to be admitted from the 2022 A Level batch is also the same number. But this number used to be around 4500 for a single A Level batch of students earlier. When the 2019 and 2020 batches were admitted together six months ago, 3500 students were admitted from a batch. Even this number is now down by 1000 admission slots compared to previous double batch admission.

IMPLICATIONS

CHANGE -1

As the admission of students has been made 50% based on national level and fifty percent based on district level, the number of students who will enter the NCOE from disadvantaged districts will drastically fall, probably by half. Meanwhile, the number of students admitted to the NCOE from the advantaged districts will increase. In my opinion, this change has been introduced for two reasons. One is to raise the standard of students admitted to NCOE, and the other is to increase the number of students admitted to the NCOE from the advantaged districts who are usually more qualified than the students from the disadvantaged districts. Initially NCOE admission was based on this 50/50 system and this was in practice for many years. Later, as the students admitted on national level refused to take up their teaching appointment in rural schools in disadvantaged districts, this system was changed to be district-based and this was a great privilege to students from disadvantaged districts and this system also helped the schools in rural areas to meet the shortage of teachers.  

CHANGE - 2

By this change, a great injustice has been caused to students who passed A level in 2021 and 2022 as the number of students admitted this year has been reduced by half. The reason for this is nothing but the inefficiency on the part of the Ministry of Education. Students who passed the A Level in 2019 and 2020 were admitted together 6 months ago after a very long delay and now two more batches of students who passed the A Level in 2021 and 2022 are to be admitted together. The NCOE has infrastructure structure, facilities and resource persons to train only two batches of students at a time, but now they are going to have four batches of students. Though the MOE gives lame excuses for the reduced number of students, the real reason is the space constraint and lack of other facilities at NCOE. The MOE is fully accountable for the late admission of students which has resulted in the drastic reduction of students. A batch of A level students can’t sacrifice their 2000 admission slots for the inefficiency of the MOE. This is grossly unfair. This can never happen in the case of university admission. Therefore, this situation has to be promptly rectified. 

Legitimate expectation of prospective students breached?

Admission to NCOE is usually delayed by years. For instance, the 2019 batch was admitted only in 2023. The 2021 batch of students too have long waited for their admission. They have been in the hope that they would be admitted to NCOE based on district basis as it was done in the past and the number of admissions would also be around 4000 for a batch, but this hope of the prospective students has been shattered by these ad hoc changes introduced to admission policy without any prior notice to them. I remember a case where the Supreme Court had given instruction to MOE that major policy changes in NCOE admission policy should be notified to prospective students through prior Gazette notifications on admission. In this case, these changes should have been notified to the prospective students through the previous Gazette notification on admission or the one before it. But it never happened. After all, this policy is not needed at this time as students are to be admitted to B. Ed degree next time under the university system.  Therefore, to do justice to these students, I earnestly request the MOE to increase the number of students admitted this year to at least 3500 for a batch. It should be around 7000 for both batches

(The author holds an MA (London) and a former President of National College of Education.)