HRD's Teacher Education Programmes To Train 11 Lakh Teachers By March 2019

Union MHRD Minister Prakash Javadekar believes that teachers’ education is of supreme importance and makes for an important part of school education reforms, specially when there are over 11 untrained teachers in schools under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development will start one of the biggest teacher education programmes that will be implemented to train 11.09 untrained teachers by March 2019. Out of these 11.09 lakh teachers, there are six lakh teachers from government schools while five lakh in private schools.  Earlier under the RTE Act, they were required to complete the diploma in elementary education by 2015. However, the Ministry has made an extension till March 2019.

The Ministry is also likely to kick start another ambitious project of teaching 2000 Kendriya Vidyalaya students, using tablets for science and mathematics projects.

According to a report by TOI, Javadekar said, “"We have extended the time up to 2019 as untrained teachers are an injustice to students. So, for the first time, we are going to train them through Swayam and Swayam Prabha, not through DEd or BEd colleges. We expect more than eight to nine lakh teachers to register, but the actual figure will be available on September 15."

"We will start the courses on October 2 and will continue them till June 2018. Next year, it starts in July and it will go on until March 19, 2019. The programme includes 1,080 lectures and nine courses in 10 languages. Apart from online training, there will also be a total of 24 face-to-face workshops during school holidays. For the first time, we are having this kind of technology-enabled teacher training for lakhs of teachers."

The Ministry is also planning to go for tablet based learning in KVs, starting September 5, 2017. The proposal for which was submitted in May and the initial phase will see 2000 students either of class 9th or 11th.  Students will also be submitting their assignments online for evaluation.