The Graduate School of Education has toughened its stand on accepting Federal contracts that require security clearances for Faculty members serving abroad.

It told the Agency for International Development this week that it would refuse such contracts unless they can be "strongly defended as meeting the school's needs for research and training." Under the new policy, the Ed School must also decide that its needs can be met only through a Federal grant.

This position, which was approved at a meeting of the Faculty Oct. 7, climaxes months of sporadic debate. A minority group in the Ed School had pressed for an even stronger statement, flatly rejecting any Government contracts that require security clearances.

The Ed School holds one contract with AID, for the operation of a secondary school in Nigeria. Edward G. Kaelber '46, assistant dean of the Ed School, said yesterday that Faculty members had been required to undergo security checks for the project but that the contract would not be terminated before it expired.

Not a 'Fight'

University officials stressed that the Ed School was not "fighting" with AID, since each side appreciated the legitimacy of the other's viewpoint. The school's position closely parallels that set forth in a report prepared last spring for the aid agency, they noted.

In that report, John W. Gardner, president of the Carnegie Corporation, said that security clearances could not be eliminated, but that much university work done overseas "need not involve any access to classified information and can properly be treated as nonsensitive." AID officials are planning to present Congress in January with a foreign-aid-bill amendment along these lines.

Officials of the Graduate School of Business Administration, which holds an AID contract for training Central American businessmen in management techniques, said that they did not plan to change their policy to conform with the Ed School's. According to Winfield G. Knopf, assistant dean for financial planning and management, the B-School has had "no difficulty in complying with the security requirements of the Government."