Santosh Kumar Sarangi, Additional Secretary, School Education, Shri R.C.Meena, Joint Secretary and Shri Vipin Kumar, Joint Secretary held a press conference on the upcoming National Award to Teachers and Shikshak Parv here today.
Shri Sarangi informed that in recognition of valuable contributions of our teachers and to take New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 a step forward, like the previous year this year too, the Department of School Education & Literacy has decided to celebrate Shikshak Parv-2021. Shikshak Parv 2021 will commence from 5th September, 2021 till 17th September through virtual mode, he said.
On vaccination drive to vaccinate more than 2 crore teachers, Shri Sarangi said that the vaccination progress in the states is being monitored by the Department of School Education and Literacy. This will also contribute to decisions pertaining to school reopening.
Shri Meena informed that President Shri Ram Nath Kovind will confer the awards to 44 Awardees through virtual mode on 5th September, 2021. A documentary film on each of the 44 Awardee Teachers will also be shown. He further informed that the National Awards to Teachers were first instituted in 1958 to recognize excellence and commitment of teachers in shaping the minds as well as future of the youth. The award was to accord public recognition to meritorious teachers working in elementary and secondary schools, he added.
Shri Vipin Kumar informed that Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi will be addressing the teachers, students, parents and stakeholders associated with education on 7th September, 2021 at 11 AM. He also informed that Prime Minister will be launching five initiatives of the Department, that is, Indian Sign Language dictionary of 10,000 words, Talking Books (audio books for visually impaired), School Quality Assessment and Accreditation Framework (SQAAF) of CBSE, NISTHA teachers’ training programme for NIPUN Bharat, and Vidyanjali Portal (for facilitating education volunteers/donors/CSR contributors for school development). The conclave will be attended by Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister for Education; Smt. Annpurna Devi, Minister of State for Education; Dr.Subhas Sarkar, Minister of State for Education and Dr.Rajkumar Ranjan Singh, Minister of State for Education along with senior officials of the Ministry.
Shri Vipin Kumar said that the inaugural conclave will be followed by webinars, discussions, presentations etc. upto 17th September, 2021 in which the educational practitioners from various schools of the country have been invited to share their experience, learnings and the roadmap ahead. It is noteworthy that teachers and practitioners from even remote schools will be speaking on issues relating quality and innovation in schools. The SCERT and DIETs in respective states will also be deliberating further on each of the webinars and suggesting the roadmap which will be consolidated by State SCERT. These will be shared with NCERT and provide inputs for curricular framework and teacher training modules, he said.
He highlighted that the theme of Webinars has been further segregated into nine sub-themes in the subsequent webinars such as Technology in Education: NDEAR, Foundational Literacy and Numeracy: A Pre-requisite to Learning and ECCE, Nurturing Inclusive Classrooms etc. to highlight the best practices and initiatives which can be adopted by schools of India.
