Dikhyaa Mohanty 
The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) has decided to treat the new academic session of 2022-23 as ‘zero academic year’ for the Teacher Education departments of three universities in Odisha. These universities are Khallikote University, Rajendra University, and Kalahandi University which run teacher education departments in self-financing mode.
According to the reports, the NCTE took the decision as the universities failed to submit their performance appraisal reports (PAR) for the academic session 2020-21. A zero academic year is one during which no academic activities can be conducted including classes and examinations.
Accordingly, the universities will not be allowed to conduct any classes for their Bachelors of Education (BEd) programs during the academic year. Each of the three universities has a student intake capacity of 50 in the department.
The NCTE has mandated all teacher educational Institutions including government universities offer the course to file PAR for every academic session. This was introduced for better monitoring, transparency, and improvement in the quality of teacher training being offered by the institutions.
In a letter to the three universities, Principal Secretary of the Higher Education department Saswat Mishra directed the Vice-Chancellors to take stringent action against the officials responsible for not submitting the PARs on time which led to the zero academic session penalty by NCTE.
