Indian government to launch biggest ever teacher-training programme on 22 August

• The Ministry of Human Resource and Development(MHRD) has announced an initiative ‘NISHTHA’ to train over 4.2 million teachers across the country.
  
• The National Initiative on School Teachers Head Holistic Advancement (NISHTHA) programme will be launched on 22 August 2019.
  
• The country has roughly 8.5 million teachers and 19,000 teacher training institutes.

In a bid to boost education and employment, the Indian government is focussing on reskilling its teachers’ workforce.

The Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) has announced an initiative ‘NISHTHA’ to train over 4.2 million teachers across the country, news agency PTI reported citing Rina Ray, Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, MHRD.

This is the world’s biggest such project named NISHTHA (National Initiative on School Teachers Head Holistic Advancement), and will be launched on 22 August 2019.

"Teachers are the pillars of the society, but it is important to upgrade their skills and ensure that they are trained in the best way. This is only possible in collaboration with teacher education institutions, which play a key role in their actual transformation," Yaduvendra Mathur, Special Secretary, NITI Aayog said.

Recently, the government also announced a programme to train Madrasa teachers across the country in subjects like English Mathematics and Computers for mainstream education, ANI reported.

With this, the government is taking a step ahead for the future of its students. As of now, India has roughly 8.5 million teachers and nearly 19,000 teacher training institutes. With the digital push, teachers can check the geographical location of institutes and also check their report cards, and submit feedback.

As of 2018, the country’s national capital Delhi government schools were recorded with 35,034 regular teachers. While the sanctioned strength was 64,096 — which is a shortage of nearly 45% of teachers.

In fact, according to a World Bank report on the teacher workforce in India, there are nearly 1,30,000 single teacher schools in India, largely impacting the quality of education in the country.

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