Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda jointly launched the ‘School Innovation Ambassador Training Program’ for 50,000 school teachers today. MoS, Smt Annpurna Devi; MoS Shri Rajkumar Ranjan Singh and MoS Dr Subhas Sarkar were also present along with senior officials of the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Tribal Affairs.Speaking on the occasion, Minister Pradhan said that teachers are the biggest influence in our lives. He said that we aim to make our teachers, change-agents and ambassadors of innovation to make our students future-ready.Shri Pradhan stressed that technology is reshaping the world and our students have the potential to not only address domestic but also the global challenges. The program launched today is a collaborative effort by the Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, CBSE and AICTE, which will in turn nurture lakhs of students with innovation capabilities, develop a culture of innovation and lay the foundation of a new and vibrant India, he added.The Union Minister for Tribal Affairs, Shri Arjun Munda expressed his gratitude that the Ministry of Education has launched its new initiative in the field of innovation in collaboration with Tribal Affairs Ministry which will benefit the large number of schools for tribal children across the country. This programme will have far reaching consequences which will help to fulfil the Prime Minister’s vision of a New Indiathe Minister elaborated.
Sh Arjun Munda further said that ‘SIATP’ will give wings to the creativity of the children and provide a platform so that they can give something new to the world with their ideas. Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRS) for tribal children is another ambitious programme of the Prime Minister under which 740 EMRS will be established in tribal dominated areas over the next three years, he said. The students of EMRS will greatly benefit from SIATP since it is also the endeavour of Tribal Affairs Ministry to give the best possible education to the tribal children. Sh Arjun Munda explained that through this unique capacity building programme for teachers, prominence has been given to development of creativity, collaboration , critical thinking and communication skills among children and the integration of Eklavya Schools into the entire programme is a big step in this direction for the meaningful development of tribal children.Speaking on the occasion, Secretary, Tribal Affairs, Shri Anil Kumar Jha said that encouraging innovation is at the core of the New Education Policy. Teachers will need to evolve new methods of teaching; they will need to first transform themselves into guides from being instruments of written text books. Shri Jha further said that apart from running Ekalavya World Education School, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs has been supporting initiatives of States/Union Territories in spreading scientific education to tribal students and the new initiative will help promote quality education among tribal children. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs has launched an Adi-Prashikshan portal which is also a repository of training inputs. It will be of great benefit if SIAP training module also gets connected to this portal, he said.The innovative and one-of-its-kind training program for school teachers, it aims at training 50,000 School Teachers on Innovation, Entrepreneurship, IPR, Design Thinking, Product development, Idea generation, among others.The program has been designed by the Innovation Cell of the Ministry of Education and AICTE for school Teachers based on its “Innovation Ambassador Training Program for Higher Educational Institution’s faculty members”. The training will be delivered in online mode only.