The much-publicised General Education Protection Campaign of the State government will be launched on January 27, Minister for Education C. Ravindranath has said.
The State-level inauguration will be done by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan at the Malayinkeezhu school here at 10 a.m. and at Durga Higher Secondary School, Kanhangad, by Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala, the Minister said.
He was speaking after at a workshop on teacher education organised by the State Council of Educational Research and Training here on Tuesday.
Mr. Ravindranath said the general education protection pledge was an important part of the programme. All people should get together in their nearby schools to take the pledge to protect and strengthen general education.
A human chain will be formed outside all schools at 11 a.m. with the message of protecting general education, the Minister said in a statement.
Academic excellence
Academic excellence was an important ingredient of the campaign so as to attract more students to public schools. This involved upgrade in physical infrastructure in schools, and preparation of master plans.
To make education more comprehensive, change should be introduced in sports and arts education. Talks would be held for this, including on manual revision, he said.
He said the workshop was being organised to debate on changes, if any, to be made to teacher training so as to achieve the goal of student-centric education.
He also called for training for parent-teacher association members on child-centred education.
General Education Secretary Usha Titus said it needed to be determined how to unite teacher training that was conducted by various agencies at present. The campaign aimed at 1,000 hours of instruction for students, but to make this possible conferences convened by AEOs or DEOs should be done online and probably held on weekends. It also needed to be determined when training programmes should be held, whether extended programmes should be truncated, and held in smaller capsules.
Later, during the discussion a number of points came up. Focus on learning, capacity building of teachers, liberal atmosphere in classes instead of regimented and draconian ways, taking teaching outside classrooms, impact of teacher education on inborn skills of trainee teachers, need to understand children’s psychology, better focus on multiple intelligence were discussed. It was suggested that a survey be held to elicit teachers’ opinion on the training programmes, and conduct aptitude tests to ascertain if teachers had the inclination for the work they did.