District Institute of Education & Training (DIET)

DIETs in Delhi will act as a district-level academic authority and nodal institutions guiding all school education and teacher education efforts in the district. They will function with substantial institutional autonomy in planning and executing their mandate, with guidance and support from SCERT and Directorate of Education. Their overarching focus will be on ensuring quality of school education and teacher education with a strong outcome orientation. Following is a summary of the proposed institutional mandate for DIETs:
Pre-service training: DIETs will be premier teacher training institutions at district level teaching DPSE and D.El.Ed courses (all DIETs). They will be recognized nationally as hubs of innovation in experimenting with innovative curriculum and pedagogy that gives substantial opportunities for practice-based learning to student-teachers through a back-and-forth movement between theory and the field through inbuilt field-based units of study in each theory course as well as specially designed practicum. In addition, they will also get opportunity for an extended period of teaching internship (similar to medical students) before course completion.
In-service training (PDT/INSET): Over the next 1-3 years, DIETs will act as nodal institutions to plan, coordinate and execute all in-service training programmes for school teachers up to secondary level (Std 10) in their districts. DIETs will have substantial autonomy to determine local training needs, design appropriate in-service training programmes, and ensure training inputs are translated to effective practice. To the extent possible, the training plan will be aligned with state and national guidelines (e.g. SSA), but top-down planning will be discontinued where DIETs are made to train a certain number of teachers to meet centrally determined targets. The role of SCERT will be limited to coordinating and executing in-service training only for all senior secondary teachers in Delhi.
Over 3-10 years however, in-service teacher training in Delhi will be further decentralized to a cluster-level with a cluster representing a footprint of 10 secondary schools. There will be enough capacity and resources at cluster-level to plan, coordinate and execute in-service teacher training as per locally determined needs. In this scenario, the role of DIETs will be primarily in training the master trainers at block and cluster level, and providing them necessary resources (e.g. physical space) to meet their goals.
Curriculum and Material Development: DIETs will be empowered to tailor specific aspects of the curriculum for pre-service training to suit the local context e.g. faculty will have flexibility to design the practicum components for each course in a way that reinforces classroom learning. Further, DIET faculty will develop their own materials for in-service training as well as to meet specific local needs.
Educational Planning and Research: DIETs will act as nodal institutions at district-level to undertake all kinds of educational research activities in their districts, preferably in collaboration with faculty from SCERT and universities to ensure methodological rigour and wider relevance of research. They will also promote a culture of evidence-based practice among all education stakeholders in the districts such as block and cluster-level resource persons, and teachers. It will train and support them in their own action-research projects.