Now, DIET centres to offer MA in Education

“With a minimum intake of 30 students for this two-year weekend course where classes will be provided on Sundays, the permission to start MA in Education at DIET Gandhinagar has been granted by the Education Department. This will take off in November. This is the first time such a course will be offered at DIET,” said a senior official in the Education Department.

The two-year degree course with four semesters will have each semester of 20 Sundays. While the infrastructure and faculty will be provided by DIET, the degree to be given by IITE. With the faculty same for this postgraduate course too, the department claims that a few visiting faculty members would be invited for MA Education charging an estimated fee of Rs 7,500 per semester.

The department claims that after closing down of two-year Diploma in Elementary Education which was formerly known as PTC, qualified faculty at DIET centres was being unutlised. To start MA in Education at DIET centres, the Education Department does not require permission and approval from National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) unlike Masters in Education (MEd).

Recently, the state Education Department under a government resolution closed down 26 PTC colleges where the number of teachers was more than the students. Based on a survey, four government colleges, 15 under DIET and seven grant-in-aid colleges were declared to be closed down in the month of July, this year. Later, self financed PTC colleges also came under the scanner.

Apart from Gandhinagar, PTC centres under DIET in districts across the state including Ahmedabad, Amreli, Anand, Jamnagar, Mehsana, Palanpur, Surat, Vadodara, Navsari, Porbandar, Junagadh and Surendranagar were shut down while retaining the staff.

Other DIET centres

After DIET Gandhinagar, other DIET at Valsad and Amreli are set to offer as an extension centre for IITE. The same course – MA in Education – will be offered at these districts too. The Education Department claims that this will meet students’ demands as already there are many extension centres running in the state by Rajasthan state universities.