Ampersand Group completes Online Teacher Training in Jammu & Kashmir

- 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 JAMMU, India, Aug. 11, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- 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 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 JAMMU, India, Aug. 11, 2020,/PRNewswire/ -- 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 program 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 to facilitate active student engagement. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech recently at a conclave on National Education Policy also resonated with 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 program. Earlier, in the first phase in Kashmir, Ampersand Group conducted a similar program that had a participation of 40 teachers from 40 schools. Addressing the valedictory session post the conclusion of the online teacher training program 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 program in Jammu. The focus should be on pre-primary education through modern methods of learning at a time when the New Education Policy 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 the 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 educate them. 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 up-gradation of teachers. The program is also highly scalable and can be expanded to the teachers across the state at any given point of time ensuring timely up-gradation of skill-sets and training mechanisms.

The program 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 program 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 program in Jammu and teachers are motivated and satisfied about the content of the training. It will be 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 endeavor 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 expanding 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 programs 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 to 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.

About Ampersand Group Ampersand Group is a global leader in providing complete solutions in school operations and end-to-end school management services to private institutions and government-run Public-Private Partnership projects in several developing nations across the world. The Ampersand Group was founded in 2004 by Mr. Rustom Kerawalla, a renowned Edupreneur with a vision to transform the educational ecosystem through consistent innovation and use of emerging technologies; to build a modern preschool and K12 education systems, which are equitable and accessible to all. The Group showcases its excellence in the K12 education through its flagship brand - VIBGYOR Group of Schools, a state-of-the-art institution built with a vision of providing high-quality education to young minds for their holistic growth in today's times. Today, Ampersand is also one of the leading PPP partners in the national government's endeavor of transforming its Anganwadi and Balwadi's. The group is currently responsible for providing nearly 700 municipal Balwadi's in Maharashtra with innovative interventions such as theme-based lessons, usage of new-age technology, and a structured age-appropriate curriculum while targeting multi age-group students. About Samagra Shiksha The Union Budget, 2018-19, has proposed to treat school education holistically without segmentation from pre-nursery to Class 12. Samagra Shiksha - an overarching program for the school education sector extending from pre-school to class 12 has been, therefore, prepared with the broader goal of improving school effectiveness measured in terms of equal opportunities for schooling and equitable learning outcomes. It subsumes the three erstwhile Schemes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), and Teacher Education (TE). This sector-wide development program/scheme would also help harmonize the implementation mechanisms and transaction costs at all levels, particularly in using state, district, and sub-district level systems, and resources, besides envisaging one comprehensive strategic plan for the development of school education at the district level. The shift in the focus is from project objectives to improving systems-level performance and schooling outcomes which will be the emphasis of the combined Scheme along-with incentivizing States towards improving the quality of education.

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