New Delhi: A total of 16,99,931 school heads and teachers have been trained under the NISHTHA (National Initiative for School Heads’ and Teachers’ Holistic Advancement) programme in 2019-20, the Ministry of Education informed on Monday.
NISHTHA was launched in 2019 to improve learning outcomes at the elementary level through an integrated teacher training programme. It aimed at building the capacities of around 42 lakh teachers and heads of schools, faculty members of SCERTs and DIETs, Block Resource Coordinators and Cluster Resource Coordinators.
According to a notification released by the ministry, 23,137 Key Resource Persons (KRPs) and State Resource Persons (SRPs) have also been trained apart from school heads and teachers.
The ministry has decided to launch phase 2 of NISHTHA at the secondary level in 2020-21. Due to the COVID–19 situation in the country, NISHTHA online has been created by customizing modules for online delivery.
Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) also trains other CBSE-affiliated school teachers in different subjects through various online as well as in-person training programmes. Till date, CBSE has empanelled 1500 such key resource persons.
Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank said on Monday that a comprehensive initiative called PM eVIDYA has been initiated by the ministry. The initiative unifies all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education and will benefit nearly 25 crore school-going children across the country.
The initiative includes DIKSHA (digital infrastructure for providing quality e-content for school education in states/UTs), one earmarked TV channel per class from 1 to 12 (one class, one channel), extensive use of radio, community radio and CBSE podcast-ShikshaVani.
It has also special e-content for visually and hearing impaired students developed on Digitally Accessible Information System (DAISY) and in sign language on NIOS website/YouTube.