UNESCO’s framework of quality learning lays emphasis on teacher’s education and insists that well-qualified teachers and interactive, learner-centred pedagogical approaches are equally important to translate curriculum into meaningful educational outcomes. India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 also envisages putting the teacher at the centre of the fundamental reforms in the education system and recognises that the teachers will require training in high-quality content as well as pedagogy. Bridging the gap between the stated objectives and the policy implementation is the real challenge. The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) has released the draft NCTE (Recognition Norms & Procedure) Regulations, 2025, for various teacher training programmes which proposes to align pre-service teachers’ education programme with the NEP recommendations, including the Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP); contemplate admissions to the Teacher Education Programme through a single-window national-level standardised test conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA); and align the curriculum framework with the University Grants Commission’s national document. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports has listed a set of significant implementation challenges for a smooth transition to ITEP, and the government considering its recommendations is critical to achieving the transformational change from old teachers’ training to ITEM for ensuring a quality teaching-learning ecosystem as envisaged in the NEP. The Committee notes in its report that many institutions, particularly private and non-multidisciplinary ones, lack the infrastructure, trained faculty, and resources to implement ITEP effectively. The requirement for composite institutions offering multidisciplinary programmes limits scalability, as not all colleges meet this criterion. The recommendations made by the parliamentary include the establishment of a phased support system, including grants and training programmes, to upgrade infrastructure and faculty qualifications in eligible institutions; partnering with premier institutions like IITs and central universities to create model ITEP programmes so that others can emulate; and additionally mandating a faculty development programme focusing on interdisciplinary teaching and 21st-century pedagogy. The committee observes that while the ITEP mandates that teacher education programmes be offered in composite institutions with multidisciplinary academic environments, 92% of Teachers Education Institutions (TEIs) are private institutions. It points out that many public and private institutions offering teacher education programmes lack the infrastructure, faculty expertise, or academic rigour to deliver a truly multidisciplinary curriculum, which compromises the quality of education and the integration of liberal arts, sciences, and pedagogical training. This is a critical gap which needs to be addressed urgently. The parliamentary panel has suggested that each district of the country have at least one public sector multidisciplinary quality teacher education institution equipped with sufficient infrastructure, faculty expertise and academic rigour for multidisciplinary training and education under ITEP. Developing the infrastructure alone cannot guarantee quality improvement, and stricter accreditation criteria and regular audits and inspections to verify the availability of qualified faculty and resources, as recommended by the Committee, are crucial to achieve the objective of transitioning from the old ecosystem of teachers’ training to an integrated model. Another important observation made by the Committee is that while the ITEP mandates dedicating a significant portion of the teacher education programmes, at least 25%, to school-based activities and internships, many institutions lack partnerships with quality schools for internships, leading to inconsistent practical training experiences. The Committee, therefore, recommends the Department of Education/NCTE develop partnerships with diverse schools (government, private, rural, and urban) to provide varied teaching experiences. It also underscores the need to create a framework for internship evaluation, including mentor feedback and student performance metrics by the NCTE. As digital technology and Artificial Intelligence are shaping the new education and knowledge system across the world, the introduction of technology-driven simulations and micro-teaching modules to supplement real-world internships, especially in institutions with limited access to quality schools recommended by the panel, will be a timely and strategic intervention to ensure that reforms in teacher education programmes are inclusive and leave no institution or teachers behind. Aligning the Smart Classroom component of the Samagra Shiksha with ITEP can address the issue of the requirement of access to digital technology during school-based activities and internships under teacher training. It can also help the trained teachers to leverage technology for improving the teaching-learning ecosystem in an educational institution. Wide disparity among states in the establishment of smart classrooms is a harsh reality about systemic gap in digital education access, and this implies that even if a teacher has undergone training to leverage smart classrooms to improve teaching, he or she may not get the opportunity to apply the skills acquired. Ending such disparities requires the states to place their additional demand and the central government to undertake a restructuring of resource allocations to ensure that the programme of establishing smart classrooms becomes inclusive and covers all government institutions in an expeditious manner. Acknowledging such infrastructure gaps and uneven pupil-teacher ratios in various states under the ITEP framework is essential to evolving state-specific solutions to bridge the gaps.