Ma’am, trained abroad, returns to teach the (not rich) kids
When Roshan Lal, a 40-year-old rickshaw puller, got his son Rakesh admitted to a government school in New Delhi, all he wanted for him was to get a decent education. Since Lal could not afford the fee of a private school, he figured a government school would be alright, “maybe my son would learn something there”.
Today, Roshan is happy because his son, now in the sixth grade, is doing well at school and is even able to teach his dad a thing or two. Most of all, Roshan is elated that many of his son’s teachers are even being trained abroad.
Teachers and principals from over 1,000 Delhi government schools have so far been sent for training to Singapore and Finland, countries that are renowned for their teaching methods.
Many parents in Delhi feel this has improved teaching methods as well as the quality of education at government schools. Till now, government schools have had a poor reputation — infamous for their poor and archaic standards of teaching and rote learning methods. But that is slowly changing.
Government school teachers are now trained in their domain areas. The training imparted to the teachers at different platforms enhances their pedagogic skills and keeps them abreast of the contemporary knowledge in their subjects.
“I got to know from my son that his teachers are going abroad for training. I am happy with the idea as it will help in improving the quality of education he is getting,” Roshan said.
“Poor people like us cannot afford private schools, so it is good to know that even government schools are now competing with private ones and our children are learning from good teachers. Even private school teachers don’t go abroad for training,” he said.
Many Delhi government schools, with fresh coats of colourful paint on their walls, now not only have comparable infrastructure to private schools, but their curriculum is undergoing a transformation. They now also have a ‘Happiness Curriculum’ designed by a team of 40 Delhi government school teachers and educators over a period of six months.
As part of this curriculum, students from Nursery to the eighth grade now have a 45-minute ‘happiness period’ which includes meditation, storytelling, question-and-answer sessions, value education and mental exercises.
Raju Yadav, a small shop-owner in the neighbourhood of Laxmi Nagar, is excited that ther e is a focus on teachers’ training.
“My wife and I are not educated. It is also difficult for me to afford tuition classes. My daughter, Swati, studies in a government school in grade two. The teachers getting training is a good thing. The more the teacher will know, the better they will teach, and the better our kids will learn,” he said.
The Aam Aadmi Party (Common Man’s Party, AAP), which came to power in Delhi in 2015, has improved the education system, one of its priority areas, by investing in infrastructure — including classrooms and other facilities like playgrounds and swimming pools — while making sure that teachers too are constantly learning.
Delhi’s education minister, Manish Sisodia, has repeatedly stressed the need to improve the education system. During his first budget speech, when he doubled the government’s expenditure on education, had said “the money spent on education and health is not an expense, but an investment into the well-being of coming generations.”
According to Sisodia, improving government schools does not end with infrastructure and recruitment and of better qualified teachers.
“Since the core of the educational improvement process lies in building the capacity of teachers, the government will train teachers and principals at the best universities, like Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford,” he said.
The first to receive international training was a group of 200 teachers who the government called “mentor teachers”. The aim was to leverage their creative expertise to enhance the pedagogic and academic capacities of over 45,000 Delhi government school teachers.
Each mentor teacher received training in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Singapore. They were then assigned to teachers at five to six schools. These 200 mentors have trained thousands of teachers over the last two years.
Manu Gulati, who went to Singapore for training in August 2017 and is now a mentor teacher, said after the training, she feels motivated and encouraged to perform better.
“The general feeling is that by investing in their training, the government is showing its trust in the teachers,” said Gulati, who started her teaching career in 2011.
“In terms of calibre, teaching aptitude, content knowledge and pedagogy skills, government school teachers are no less than those at private schools,” she proudly added.
Among the few ground-breaking improvements, she said, was the feedback from the students. “A teacher’s job is not just limited to providing knowledge and skills to students, but also to provide them emotional and psychological support, something that the training has helped us teachers with”.
Medha Parashar, another mentor teacher said: “The teacher is no more the centre of teaching, but the students are. Teaching is not mechanical now, it is interactive.”
“Through various trainings, we learned about 45 methods of teaching in a class, and can use any of these,” said Parashar, who has been a teacher for the past 27 years.
The training, Gulati said, gives a new vision and purpose to teachers. The benefit of training teachers had, in turn, positively impacted hundreds of thousands of students of not-so-well-off families in the capital who had earlier been deprived of a quality education.
However, Parashar said, it will take some time for changes to be visible. “We are dealing with living beings. No change will happen overnight as small children are involved. But it will happen in time.”
The first to be trained in Singapore and Finland was a batch of 200 teachers who the government called “mentor teachers”, who have then trained 45,000 teachers in Delhi’s government schools