The Department of School Education and Literacy launched a National Mission to improve learning outcomes at the Elementary level through an Integrated Teacher Training Programme called NISHTHA – National Initiative for School Heads’ and Teachers’ Holistic Advancement on 21st August, 2019. The aim of this integrated teacher training programme was to build the capacities of around 42 lakh teachers and Heads of Schools, faculty members of SCERTs and DIETs and Block Resource Coordinators and Cluster Resource Coordinators. A total of 23,137 Key Resource Persons (KRPs) and State Resource Persons (SRPs) and 16,99,931 School Heads and Teachers have been trained under NISTHA in 2019-20.
In 2020-21, it has been decided to launch NISHTHA – Phase II at the secondary level. Due to COVID – 19situations, NISHTHA Online has been created by customizing Modules for Online delivery.
Central Board of Secondary Education also keeps organizing Prospective Resource Persons training programmes for the key resource persons. These Key Resource Persons, in turn, train other teachers of the schools affiliated to CBSE in various subjects through online as well as in-person training programmes organized by CBSE. Till date CBSE has empanelled 1500 such key resource persons with it.
202 schools including five Kendriya Vidyalayas have one or more such students who scored aggregate 99 or above percentage in class X in the year 2020. State wise rank on the percentage of students scoring above 99 percentages aggregate marks of Kendriya Vidyalaya are as follows.
| Name of the KV | State | Rank in the State |
| KV Bailey Road Patna | Bihar | 5 |
| K V I N S Dronacharya Cochin | Kerala | 11 |
| KVSambalpur | Odisha | 6 |
| KVPattom Trivandrum | Kerala | 19 |
| KV No 1 Salt Lake Kolkata | West Bengal | 09 |
A comprehensive initiative called PM eVIDYA has been initiated which unifies all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education. This will benefit nearly 25 crore school going children across the country. The initiative includes:
- DIKSHA the nation’s digital infrastructure for providing quality e-content for school education in states/UTs: and QR coded Energized Textbooks for all grades (one nation, one digital platform)
- One earmarked TV channel per class from 1 to 12 (one class, one channel)
- Extensive use of Radio, Community radio and CBSE Podcast- ShikshaVani
- Special e-content for visually and hearing impaired developed on Digitally Accessible Information System (DAISY) and in sign language on NIOS website/ YouTube
INDIA REPORT- Digital Education June 2020
The State/ UT Governments have also managed the critical task of providing digital education at the door step of the students. The report can be accessed here:
https://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/India_Report_Digital_Education_0.pdf
PRAGYATA Guidelines on Digital Education
Keeping in view the availability of digital infrastructure, guideline briefs on various modes of digital education including online mode that depends more on availability of internet, partially online mode that utilizes the blended approach of digital technology and other offline activities, partial and offline mode that utilizes television and radio as a major medium of instruction of education. The guidelines can be accessed at:
https://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/pragyata-guidelines_0.pdf
As far as Central Board of Secondary Education is concerned, the Board has reduced syllabi of major subjects only for the purpose of summative examinations and this is a temporary measure for this year only to mitigate the effect of lockdown. The Committee of Courses for each subject has considered the following basis while rationalizing the syllabus content as it has become a necessity:
- The schools are closed without face to face teaching and many students are deprived of online classes due to multiple reasons
- All topics are important therefore all topics to be learnt through the Alternative Academic Calendar of NCERT. It emphasizes providing variety of learning opportunities based on learner-centered-pedagogies and also focused on learning outcomes to students. This does not entail reduction of syllabus as far as learning is considered.
- In this extraordinary situation, certain topics which students have already studied or will study in detail in higher classes may be omitted from summative assessments. Teachers can discuss these topics as required.
- The topics/concepts that are duplicated in other subjects in the same class, or already covered in previous classes to a certain extent can be minimized. This is considered as the teachers can integrate the previous knowledge while teaching a particular topic.
- Appropriate changes in Practical components as per revision needs to be done.
CBSE is a progressive Board and over the years has encouraged thematic, concept based and integrated approach of teaching and learning.
The Fit India Movement campaigns are promoted through the generic tagline of “Fit Hai to Hit Hai India”. Under the Fit India Movement, various programmes/ campaigns have been executed in collaboration with CBSE and other organizations which have benefitted the school going children. These include Fit India School Certification system and Fit India School Week which encourage schools to raise the fitness bar of children by increasing Physical Education periods and improving the infrastructure in schools for sports/fitness activities. So far, more than 1.66 lakh schools have registered as Fit India Schools and 15,000 schools celebrated The Fit India School Week in the month of Nov-Dec 2019.
Further, various other programmes have also been undertaken, including Fit India Plog Run, Fit India Cyclothon, Fit India Active Day series, Fit India Champions talks, Fit India Yoga Day and Fit India Freedom Run, which saw the participation of school children in large numbers.
The information was given by the Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.
