Honours efforts of Education Officers and Teachers during pandemic

NEW DELHI, Nov. 25, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Sri Aurobindo Society organised a virtual 'National Conference- Empowering Through Zero- Shunya Se Sashaktikaran' chaired by Hon'ble Education Minister of India, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank', wherein various initiatives of Sri Aurobindo Society were launched. In the presence of thousands of education officers and teachers connected through digital platforms across the country, Hon'ble Education Minister honoured more than 40 education officers for their leadership role and 26 teachers for their innovative practices during Covid-19 pandemic. The Hon'ble Minister launched 'Innovation and Leadership Casebook - Covid Edition', the e-books comprise of the innovative efforts and work of the education officers and teachers.

Addressing the audience, Hon'ble Minister said, "It's heartening to know that the initiatives of Sri Aurobindo Society are in alignment with the vision of National Education Policy-2020. The year 2020 has taught us that the time to be bounded by old methods and limitation is over. There is a need for qualitative improvement in education; to realize myriad hopes, we have to bring positive changes in education and we need to move on new leagues, adopt new approaches and make our present generation future-ready; National Education Policy - 2020 is our concrete step in this direction."

During the event, a research report prepared by Cambridge on 'Zero-Investment Innovations for Education Initiatives' (ZIIEI), a nation-wide education programme of Sri Aurobindo Society and HDFC Bank, was also launched. The report presents an in-depth perception of the various stakeholders of ZIIEI programme. Mr. Rod Smith, Managing Director, Global Education at Cambridge University Press, shared the key findings of the report. Talking on the highpoints of the report, he said,"The ZIIEI programme's bottom-up approach creates social opportunities and transform functioning into capabilities. He added that ZIIEI programme has successfully created 'teacher learning communities' to discuss, try out, and evaluate techniques for themselves. Clearly, this is a form of professional self-development, centred around innovating with teaching, learning and assessment practices."

The event was attended by Ms. Ashima Bhat - Group Head - Business and Finance, HDFC Bank and Ms. Nusrat Pathan, Head-Corporate Social Responsibilities - HDFC Bank. Thanking Hon'ble Education Minister for supporting the ZIIEI programme, she said, "National Education Policy-2020 is a path breaker in education which will set new milestones. For increased competencies in our students, it's imperative that our teachers get constructive environment to work with collaborative spirit and gain collective successes. HDFC Bank and Sri Aurobindo Society programmes focus on building teachers capabilities and equipping them for fostering experiential and learning environment in classrooms through Innovative Pathshaala."

The Hon'ble Minister also launched Auro Scholarships programme, which promotes micro-scholarships among the students.  Thanking all the dignitaries and congratulating the education officers and teachers for their commendable efforts, Shri Sambhrant Sharma, Director- Education, Sri Aurobindo Society said that through Auro Scholarship programme we incentivize students to learn by direct benefit Transfer in education. He added, "The ZIIEI programme has oriented around 2 million teachers for zero-investment innovation in education, and is in the process of establishing Role-Model Schools in 300 districts of the country. The education officers and teachers are the change-makers of the country and with collective efforts we aim to create such role model schools in all the districts of the country. We are committed to bring the transformation at the grassroots level through zero-investment innovations based experiential teaching curriculum and micro-scholarships."

Zero-Investment Innovations for Education Initiatives (ZIIEI) is a mass-scale teacher outreach initiative started in  2015 by Sri Aurobindo Society and HDFC Bank. It has come a long way from its inception and till date around 2 Million  teachers have been oriented towards ZIIEI across all the states and union  territories of India.

ZIIEI  aims to find 'the scattered, isolated and unrecognised, but effective solutions' created by teachers at the grassroot and systematically scale them up to lakhs of  schools every year.  In the process, teachers are:

• Sensitised about the critical need for innovations in the Indian state-run schools;
• Educated about the potential of innovation that requires zero monetary investment;
• Encouraged to share such best practices freely with the teaching community; and
• Recognised grandly for their contribution towards improving the quality of
  education.

Website URL -  https://www.ziiei.com/

                          https://aurosociety.org/

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