What the NPST is…

…and why it matters.

Hello all. Welcome to the 162nd edition of TEPS Weekly!

There is an NEP 2020. Then there is the NCF-TE,  the NCF-FS, the NCF-SE... So many policy documents related to education have been released over the last 5-6 years! One of them is the National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST), which articulates the professional standards expected from any teacher within the school education system. It further breaks down the role of teaching into certain competencies and gives educators a visible growth path in these competencies. The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) came up with the NPST as a means to bring greater clarity to teacher expectations, teacher growth and teacher appraisal.

Some current realities of school teachers in India

• Teachers do not know what ‘growth’ means for them. They normally equate years of teaching with growth and experience.

• Even if teachers know what they want to grow in (say, conducting more formative assessments or using more active learning experiences in the lessons), they do not know what the pathway is to this growth.

• Yearly appraisals are not connected with conversations of growth and are pretty generic.

• Feedback to teachers is either based on anecdotal evidence or is too broad.

The NPST offers a common language for describing teacher quality and helps answer three questions that should help teachers facing the above mentioned realities:

1. What should a teacher value?

2. What should a teacher know and do?

3. What does growth look like across the career of an educator?

Policy documents feel important but inaccessible. We know we should pay attention to them, but we are not always sure what they mean for students, teachers or even school leaders. So we have gone through this document and summarised it for you. The NPST is divided into three standards:

Standard 1: Core Values and Ethics

This standard should be looked at as the foundation. Before we talk about pedagogy, assessment or innovation, we have to ask a more basic question: does the teacher act in ways that protect the dignity, safety and fairness owed to every learner? This standard matters because students do not learn well in spaces where they feel humiliated, dismissed or treated unfairly. 

Imagine a teacher handing back corrected answer sheets. One version of the response is public shaming: “You got the lowest marks again.” Another version is professional and humane: “Please read my comments quietly, and if you need help, I’m happy to speak with you.” This standard in the NPST stems from the idea that professionalism begins not only with competence, but also with how that competence is used in relation to children.

Some competencies included in this standard are ‘upholding constitutional values’, ‘professional relationships’, etc.

Standard 2: Knowledge and Practice

This is the part most educators instinctively associate with teaching quality. It includes how to plan lessons, explain ideas, ask questions, respond to student thinking, assess understanding and support learning for different learners. This standard is crucial because good intentions are not enough. A teacher may care deeply about students and still struggle to create meaningful learning for their students. 

Let’s take the example of a Grade 6 Science class learning about water conservation. One teacher asks, “Tell me three ways to save water.” Students may answer, but the thinking remains shallow. Another teacher asks, “Which would save the most water in our school – fixing leaking taps, using buckets instead of pipes to water the playground, or reusing RO waste water?” Now students have to compare, reason and apply ideas of water conservation to a real context. This shift is what this standard of the NPST is demanding of the teachers and educators – teaching and learning should be planned, deliberate, intellectually rigorous.

Some competencies in this standard are ‘lesson planning’, ‘assessments’, ‘classroom management’, etc.

Standard 3: Professional Growth and Development

This is where the NPST recognises that teaching is not a fixed skill set. Educators need to keep growing and adapting. This standard ensures that teachers get feedback, reflect on the feedback, participate in professional development and contribute to the growth of others, as well. This is especially important in this day and age where the psychological needs of students are so different than earlier. Also, with the advent of GenAI, if teachers do not keep adapting their practice quickly, they will fall behind or at least will teach students irrelevant or borderline useless content. 

For example, if a high school teacher sees that she had very low participation in their classes, one reaction could be defensive: “They were quiet, so I’ll give a surprise test tomorrow.” Another is reflective: “My discussion approach did not work. Tomorrow I’ll try think-pair-share first.” The second response is what professional growth looks like in practice – the pedagogy or teaching approach is not set in stone and is not perfect, but it is responsive.

Teacher Development and Career Stages

For every competency or domain mentioned in the three standards, there are three stages of development – Proficient, Advanced, Expert. This is a very important shift in the mindset of looking at teacher professional development and teacher experience. Mostly, schools think of teachers in binary terms: good or weak, experienced or inexperienced. The NPST asks us to think in terms of progression instead. 

• At the Proficient stage, a teacher is building core competence and beginning to apply it consistently. 

• At the Advanced stage, the teacher’s practice becomes more intentional and responsive to what students are doing. 

• At the Expert stage, the teacher’s influence extends beyond their own classroom – they support colleagues, model strong practice and contribute to the school’s professional culture. 

This approach does two things:

1. Experience is not measured only in years 

2. Growth path and the teachers’ journey on it are visible 

For example: 

• A Proficient teacher explains a task clearly, uses eye contact and gives short, manageable instructions. That is important and necessary. 

• An Advanced teacher notices that only a few students are responding, so they change the participation structure: “Discuss with your partner first. Now I want to hear two different ideas from this side of the room.” Here, the teacher is not just communicating clearly; they are using communication to shape participation. 

• An Expert teacher goes one step further. They can observe a colleague’s class and offer useful feedback on how communication strategies can improve student participation. 

In other words, the same area of practice deepens over time, first as individual competence, then as responsive teaching, and finally as professional influence.

How can schools use the NPST

If schools read it only as a policy document, they may admire it and ignore it. But if schools decide to operationalise it, the NPST can become the backbone of teacher development. So what does a school need to do to operationalise NPST?

1. Convert broad expectations of the NPST into observable school-level progression

2. Choose a focus area from the standards for the school

3. Define what Proficient, Advanced and Expert practice looks like in their own context 

4. Identify where teachers currently are, using classroom observations, student work and other relevant data. 

5. Plan professional development in a targeted way 

This has two major advantages. First, it makes teacher development fairer. When expectations are clearer, feedback becomes less personality-driven and more evidence-based. Second, it makes professional development more useful. Instead of running workshops because a calendar demands them, schools can run support that is linked to an actual progression pathway. A teacher working on building inclusive participation needs different support from a teacher who is ready to mentor colleagues in that same area. 

You can take up the TEPS Course Decoding the NPST for a deeper understanding of this document. Things Education also supports schools in operationalising the NPST and creating Personalised Development Plans for continuous professional development of teachers. Reach out to us at info@things-education.com or +919898469961 for a conversation with us!

---

If you found this newsletter useful, please share it.

If you received this newsletter from someone and you would like to subscribe to us, please click here.

Edition: 5.17