A touch of China at Mumbai University (MU) campus soon

Come July, Chinese experts will be here in the city to give you a chance to learn about their country and its language.

The first-of-its-kind in India, the Confucius Institute will be set up at the Kalina campus of the University of Mumbai. For this, China has given the varsity as much as $1,50,000. The centre will be in collaboration with the Tianjin University of Technology in China in the presence of teachers especially flown from China.

Confucius Institutes are non-profit, public institutes that facilitate cultural exchange and teach Mandarin  through schools and universities. They are believed to promote China’s language and  project the country as a global ‘soft power’.  “The structure, syllabi of various courses, fee and number of seats are yet to be worked out,” Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the university, Naresh Chandra said.

Several varsity delegations flew to Tianjin over the last two years to work out details of the collaboration. Although other academic/research collaborations are yet to be finalised, all nitty-gritty of the institute are already in place along with huge funds.

Currently, there are 350 such Confucius centres in 180 countries that offer courses in Mandarin and the Chinese culture, which includes sports, food, music, etc.

Moreover, the Central Board of Secondary Education, too, has chalked out a detailed plan to teach Mandarin  at select schools. For this, China has offered to help train 300 Indian teachers in the language for six months, free of cost. They will also help the board frame the curriculum.

Teachers may get more time for CTET
Prospective teachers will find it easier to sail through the Central Teachers Eligibility Test (CTET) if the human resource development ministry accepts the latest proposal mooted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

The CBSE, the central body which conducts the test on the direction of MHRD, has written to Ministry to increase the duration of the CTET papers by one hour. Currently, candidates have one hour and 30 minutes to write the paper. MHRD is yet to respond though even after a month, said a top official of CBSE.

The ministry has invited flak after very low pass percentage of CTET in last seasons. Close to 10 lakh candidates apply for CTET, which is conducted twice a year. Only 14% candidates had cleared CTET in January 2012, which further dipped to 6% in November 2012.

The CBSE proposal, if accepted, may help more aspirants to qualify scoring better marks.

However, the quality of teachers may be compromised. Currently, CTET papers have 150 questions to be solved in 90 minutes and one needs to score minimum 60% marks to qualify.

Under the RTE Act 2009, the Union government introduced CTET from 2011 to upgrade the quality of primary and secondary education across India, choosing people who have right aptitude and skills to teach. Now, it is mandatory to qualify this test to become a teacher of classes I-VIII in CBSE-aided schools from this academic year. Teachers changing schools will need CTET scores.

Hari Chandan, teacher educator and director of Institute of Distance and Open Learning at University of Mumbai, says, “There is a need for more teachers in the country, so the bar should not be raised higher unnecessarily.”

Director of CTET (CBSE), Pitam Singh, denied that increase in duration has anything to do with compromising the quality of teachers. He said, “This will just help the aspirants relax by giving them one minute per question.”

@kanchanDNA