Whenever I visit a school, be it a small rural cluster, an urban government institution, or a low-income private school, I often draw a familiar comparison: the promise of policy versus the actual reality of classrooms. India today has a bold vision for its education system: transforming pedagogy, curriculum and learning through the reforms of the National Education Policy (NEP 2020). But vision without ground implementation is like a building without a foundation. In these years of change, our central task is to ensure that capacity-building for teachers moves from paper to reality in the classroom.
NEP 2020 placed teacher education at the center of its reform agenda. It envisages changes to the four-year Integrated Teacher Education Program (ITEP), a more rigorous and multidisciplinary approach to teacher preparation, and a greater emphasis on continuous professional development throughout the teaching career. ITEP is designed to create a seamless training continuum for aspiring and serving teachers by combining academic depth, subject knowledge and local context sensitivity.
The policy also introduces the idea of National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST), a common guideline to define what it means to be a high quality teacher across different subjects and career levels. These standards aim to cover key aspects of teacher selection, career progression, professional development, evaluation etc.
Further, the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) has developed a comprehensive report on NPST, which envisages alignment of in-service training, pre-service courses and periodic teacher learning for continuous development and support.
Capacity-building initiatives of agencies like CBSE, DIKSHA and NCERT complement the newly envisioned changes. For example, CBSE has recently launched 14 domain-wise training programmes, which seek to strengthen teachers in areas such as assessment, foundational skills and inclusive education. The intention in this ecosystem is clear: India positions teachers not as passive recipients but as a centrifugal force for reform.
Even though India is pursuing ambitious reforms, the journey from policy design to classroom impact is not simple. The challenge is not one of intention but of change, how to turn well-meaning frameworks into experiences that empower teachers and improve learning outcomes.
In many parts of the country, especially in rural and economically weaker contexts, teachers play multiple roles; Teaching multiple grades and subjects, managing administrative tasks, and addressing diverse learning needs. For such teachers, professional development opportunities are limited by time, connectivity, and peer support. Therefore, capacity building needs to be both aspirational and flexible, meeting teachers where they are.
It is equally important to ensure that the training modules connect with the reality of school education. For example, any session on digital pedagogy or differentiated instruction should take into account the daily lived experiences of teachers in terms of infrastructure, language and class size. Professional development is powerful when it is based on the lived experiences of teachers and the learning needs of students. Professional training that provides need-based and differentiated training to teachers will ensure that capacity building meets the diverse learning needs of students, as well as equipping teachers with fluid strategies that can emerge at every moment in their context. Learning does not truly take place unless professional learning represents the realities that teachers experience in practice every day.
Another important dimension is to maintain a balance between accountability and autonomy. The NPST framework also encourages teacher development through structured mentoring and continuous feedback, while setting clear professional standards. Platforms like NISHTHA have begun to integrate mentoring support to help teachers adjust to these standards while fostering professional creativity. Standards do not restrict innovation; Instead, they provide the foundation upon which teachers can build reflective and contextually relevant practices.
Shared accountability is equally important. Teachers cannot take sole responsibility for putting training into practice in classrooms. Resource persons, administrators, and academic leaders must play their role by providing advice, follow-up support, and creating the space and encouragement necessary for teachers to practice new learning. Capacity-building is not an event; It is a collective process of constant reflection and reinforcement. Ultimately it should evolve from being an event to becoming part of a learning culture, a learning culture that values development, collaboration and reflection.
Around the world, countries that have developed strong teacher development ecosystems have a fairly consistent set of practices across contexts. Finland deeply invests in teacher autonomy, collaborative professional learning, and trust in teachers’ judgment. Singapore includes structured mentoring forums, cycles of classroom observation and reflective communities of practice. As India continues to refine its framework, it should draw from such experiences and incorporate consultation systems and professional learning communities (PLCs) into policy operations.
Many SCERTs and DIETs have already included peer observations, reflective workshops and collaborative lesson planning in their training calendars for the year. Similarly, national organizations like NCERT and CBSE are promoting hybrid forms of PLCs and capacity building through initiatives like DIKSHA and NISHTHA. Although these programs are still in the exploratory stages, they represent a turning point, a beginning in which collaboration, reflection, and collective learning are becoming embedded in the profession itself.
As I converse with teachers, district leaders, and policy makers, one question emerges throughout most of our discussions: How do we move from training to change? The solution may not lie in policy but in its implementation.
How can we deliver professional development within a national framework like NPST, but remain sensitive to local realities? For example, a teacher in a single-teacher school will face different types of challenges than a teacher in a densely populated city classroom. If capacity building is to be empowering, it needs to acknowledge and use these differences, not overcome them.
Can schools themselves become living laboratories for professional development? Can cluster-based professional learning communities (PLCs) invite teachers to observe, share, and learn from each other and promote lasting change beyond the initial professional learning workshop? Can the school premises mentioned in the NEP become the basis for operating a PLC?
Accountability should be shared. Can administrators and resource persons take responsibility for supporting teachers in implementing the new pedagogy, using recognition and mentoring as levers to ensure continued implementation?
As ITEP evolves, perhaps its structure could also allow for two modular pathways, one up to the initial stage and one beyond, thereby ensuring both specialization and continuity across teacher education levels.
And finally, how do we measure success? Beyond attendance or satisfaction metrics, the focus should be on what really matters: whether teachers feel more confident, students learn better, and schools become more equitable and inclusive places.
These questions are not meant to criticize the policy, but to humanize it, to remind us that behind every structure stands a teacher, and behind every teacher stands a child, whose future depends on how well we link policy to practice.
Encouragingly, many states and ministries are already spending on capacity-building dashboards that track training completion, in addition to mentoring, follow-up and observations in the classroom. The NPST framework is supporting the alignment of training to purpose; Co-designed modules, enabling a local ecosystem of reflective learning and practice.
In classrooms where teachers use new formative assessment methods learned through training, the spark of engagement among students often reignites their motivation. That moment of engagement shows that real change begins when capacity building moves beyond workshops and into everyday practice.
Policy frameworks like NEP 2020, NPST and ITEP form a bridge to reimagine teacher education in India, not just by design but by execution. To implement this, teachers must be seen not as recipients of reform, but as co-creators. Resource persons, administrators and system leaders must ‘share accountability’ to put the vision into practice.
By asking insightful questions, designing context-sensitive modules, and incorporating ongoing mentorship, we can begin to bridge the gap between promise and practice. And if we do that, we won’t have to create yet another training system, but create a living, growing community of teachers to sustain transformative learning for all children.
This article is written by Antony Nellissery, Head of Sterlite Aid India Foundation.
