Ampersand Group conducted online teacher training for nearly 100 schools in Early Childhood Care Education in Jammu & Kashmir
Ampersand Group’s Eduspark partnered with Samagra Shiksha, Department of School Education, Government of Jammu & Kashmir to conduct the pilot project which is scalable across the state at any given time
Ampersand Group’s Eduspark, an end-to-end school management services provider completed the second edition of the five-day online teachers training project in Jammu. Ampersand Group’s partnered with Samagra Shiksha, Department of School Education, Government of Jammu & Kashmir for conducting this program.
This overarching programme for the school education sector is aligned with the New Education Policy which highlights the need to use technology for upgrading skills of the teachers in order to facilitate active student engagement. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech recently at a conclave on National Education Policy also resonated the role of the teachers for the development of the nation.
The Professional Development Program in Early Childhood Education commenced from July 27, 2020 with a select group of 54 teachers hailing from 11 districts and 44 zones in Jammu, under the Samagra Shiksha programme. Earlier, in the first phase in Kashmir, Ampersand Group conducted a similar programme which had a participation of 40 teachers from 40 schools.
Addressing the valedictory session post the conclusion of the online teacher training programme in Jammu, Dr. Asgar Hassan Samoon, Principal Secretary to the Government School Education Department, Government of Jammu & Kashmir, said, “I congratulate Mr. Rustom Kerawalla and Ampersand Group for their efforts in conducting the second edition of the online teacher training programme in Jammu. The focus should be in pre-primary education through modern methods of learning at a time when the New Education Policy too has sought to bring pre-primary education into mainstream education. We hope this project will help teachers from Jammu benefit from the online training for helping children in the state. We will gradually take this to other parts of the state.”
Mr. Samoon added that teachers are role models and children will follow them and become like them. The idea behind this pilot is to create a platform for training of teachers. “We should aim at training 2000 teachers every year. Fifty percent of the teachers should be recruited directly from the market as they bring in fresh ideas. We need to create a separate cadre for pre-school education and specialist teachers have to be employed for that. It is time to look at all chidden, rich or poor, and give them education. There are 30 crore kids who are our future. We have to focus on them and go out of our way to provide means of education for them.”
The teacher training project is aimed at helping scores of teachers to maintain continuity in learning and is expected to boost the upgradation of teachers. The programme is also highly scalable and can be expanded to the teachers across the state at any given point of time ensuring timely upgradation of skill-sets and training mechanisms.
The programme aims to cover certain vital aspects for Early Childhood of children with teachers through a tech-enabled platform and covered modules such as child development, special needs, safety practices in school, and curriculum planning among others. The project was led by Dr. Reeta Sonawat, Director, Academics and Training, Ampersand Group who specializes in the Early Childhood Education programme and has been extensively training teachers with a primary focus on strengthening skills in the formative years of the child.
Dr. Anuradha Gupta, Director, School Education, Jammu, Government of Jammu & Kashmir said, “We have got extremely positive feedback on the online training programme in Jammu and teachers are really motivated and satisfied about the content of the training. It will be a natural progress to take it to all parts of the state and train as many teachers as possible so that ultimately children in the state are benefitted.”
Dr. Arun Manhas, Project Director, Samagra Shiksha, Government of Jammu & Kashmir, said, “The session has been extremely productive and useful for teachers who have found new methods of early childhood education. We will endeavour to take this to other parts of the state to try and train as many teachers as possible in the state.”
In his speech, Mr. Rustom Kerawalla, Chairman, Ampersand Group said that Ampersand was committed to expand the online teachers training in Jammu & Kashmir in collaboration with the state government for the benefit of teachers and students. “In line with the New Education Policy, we are committed to increasingly use technology for teacher training and continued learning in the state. With the bringing of pre-primary education into the mainstream in the New National Education Policy, the relevance of early childhood training of teachers has become more important and such training programmes will assume special significance. We intend to take this to other parts of the state and train as many teachers as possible to enable them get tuned to modern teaching methods for children.”
Ampersand Group’s Eduspark has been extensively partnering with the central and state governments across India undertaking public-private partnership projects by providing infrastructure, teacher training, content development along with several e-learning modules in K12 schooling. Its recent projects include those with the Government of Punjab, Ministry of Women & Child Development in Nashik, Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, Central Tibetan School Administration in Uttarakhand and West Bengal, Tamil Nadu among others.