GUWAHATI, Aug 21 - The State Innovation and Transformation Aayog (SITA) is trying to rope in British Council as the State�s partner in the areas of professional development initiatives for teachers of elementary and secondary schools, development of communication skills of the State�s civil servants, capacity building programme for faculty and early career researchers in higher education and cultural sectors.
The British Council is the United Kingdom�s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities.
These issues were discussed during a recent virtual meeting between SITA and British Council. The meeting was the result of the efforts made by the SITA for quite some time to convince British Council to collaborate with the Assam government for capacity building in the areas of English learning from the primary school level, and in developing school libraries, proper methodology for heritage and culture conservation, etc.
According to SITA OSD Manijyoti Baruah, SITA in its presentation at the meeting said, among others, that it wants to improve the English language teaching and learning across pre-primary, primary and secondary school levels in all vernacular medium schools of the State. This will, in the long run, help in building the students� capacity to take the plunge into higher studies and thus enhance their employability.
It further said that improving the teaching skills of the faculty in higher education sector also needs immediate attention and intervention. New and scientific teaching methodology, including online teaching and online content development, are very essential at this level, it said.
British Council representatives highlighted the need to focus on specific areas such as strengthening of capacity building in education institutions, teachers and faculty and internationalising higher education.
They said that English Language Training (ELT), developing master trainers, capacity building workshops, etc., are their strength and they can come up with a range of options depending on the situations.
In the last two years alone, they have trained over 660 teachers, across the Northeast, in classroom methodologies and created a pool of 348 master trainers through an agreement with the Northeastern Council. British Council recently conducted a scoping study in collaboration with the Centre for Development and Research in Education (CDARE) at Sheffield Hallam University on the status of science and mathematics teaching and learning in the NE India middle schools.
SITA advisors Bhaskar Barua, Dr Mridul Hazarika and Kashinath Hazarika are taking the lead in the entire effort.