Essar Foundation has partnered with Gujarat Council for Education, Research, and Training (GCERT) to develop a rich repository of more than 10,000 educational innovations by teachers on pedagogical tools, learning and management processes. Once established, the cell will be reaching out to as many as 33,000 schools in the entire state. GCERT is a pivotal institution at the state level for the development of education at primary and secondary schools. Because the repository is open source, it will also benefit students and teachers across the globe.
Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad had initiated a project called “Teachers as transformers” between 1998 and 2005, which had them documenting innovations used by teachers to teach elementary level students. This database, now an resource of GCERT, required a much larger vision and approach towards making it dynamic, constructive, and resourceful. Therefore, in a bid to enrich this existing innovation resource base through an institution building process that would devise an effective dissemination strategy for the innovations, Essar Foundation, with support from Essar Oil Limited (EOL), extended its intent to collaborate with GCERT.
The key outcomes expected of the project include –
- Developing a state level platform for identification and documentation of innovations in Primary Education in Gujarat
- Creating a technology platform for registration and dissemination of technology platform
- Promoting research and disseminating the findings in the area of Primary Education, The same would be done directly by the EI Cell or by engaging other knowledge Institutions like IIMA, NID, CEPT etc.
- Carrying out regular interventions at Block level, District Level and State Level in the form of the Workshops, Educational fairs, Seminars for exchanging peer learning and sharing Educational Innovations for improving leaning outcomes.
- Encouraging teachers to utilize the innovations and create a track record of the innovations applied
- Assessing the change in the learning level of teachers and students.
EOL (through this partnership) will not only reinforce its commitment to elevate and enrich the quality of education, but also benefit from this strategic state level partnership involving multiple key stakeholders like the Ministers, Principal Secretary and other senior government officials of GoG. The MoU between both the parties was signed on 20th January. Dr T.S. Joshi, Director, GCERT, and Mr Deepak Arora, CEO, Essar Foundation were the respective signatories from both the parties. They were accompanied by Mr Geojo Paul, Head Administration (India) and CSR, EOL, and Mr Awadhesh Pathak, Lead – CSR, Jamnagar. With complementing capabilities of their own, both GCERT and Essar Foundation will bring value to this revolutionary initiative of making education innovation widespread for improving quality of school education in the country and beyond.
