Ampersand Group conducts online Teachers’ Training project in Jammu

- Ampersand Group is among the first from the private sector to partner Government of Jammu & Kashmir in field of Education. Training programme will be deployed using the latest techniques of teacher training which are highly scalable and can be rolled out to thousands of teachers across the state after the successful completion of pilot project

- Online Teacher Training to be imparted in the area of Early Childhood Care covering latest teaching methodology &with the objective of aiding teachers in overcoming hostile terrain and weather disruptions.

Jammu, July 27, 2020: After the successful completion of a five-day online teachers training project in Srinagar in June this year, the Ampersand Group, an end to end school management services providerorganized the second edition of their online Teachers’ Training project in Jammu, today. Ampersand Group’s Eduspark has partnered with Samagra Shiksha, Department of School Education, Government of Jammu & Kashmir for conducting this programme.

The five-day Professional Development Program in Early Childhood Education programme commenced from July 27, 2020 with a select group of 54 teachers hailing from 11 districts and 44 zones in Jammu, under the Samagra Shiksha programme. This is an overarching programme for the school education sector extending from Pre-school to Class 12 that will be highly beneficial for the teachers to enhance their skill-set and usher a new era in academics and learning in the state. The June training session was the first time a project on this scale was initiated by the Government of Jammu & Kashmir with Ampersand Group’s Eduspark to train teachers amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

The teacher training project would help scores of teachers to maintain continuity in learning especially during winter seasons where most areas of the state remains cut-off from the country due to blockades caused by heavy snowfall. Being a geographically challenged state, online teacher training will boost the upgradation of teachers irrespective of these impediments. The program is also highly scalable and can be expanded to the teachers across the state at any given point of time ensuring timely upgradation of skill-sets and training mechanisms.

The programme aims to cover certain vitals aspects for Early Childhood of children with teachers through a tech-enabled platform and would cover modules such as child development, special needs, safety practices in school, and curriculum planning among others. The pilot project will be led by Dr. Reeta Sonawat, Director, Academics and Training, Ampersand Group who specializes in the Early Childhood Education programme and has been extensively training teachers with a primary focus on strengthening skills in the formative years of the child.

Speaking on the initiation of the Professional Development Program in Early Childhood Education programme, Dr. Asgar Hassan Samoon, Principal Secretary to the Government School Education Department, Government of Jammu & Kashmir, said, “After a successful completion of the first pilot teachers’ training project in Srinagar, we hope this project will also help teachers from Jammu benefit from the online training for helping children in the state. We will gradually take this to other parts of the state. We appreciate this collaboration with Ampersand Group and request them explore possibilities for investment in the Education sector in Jammu & Kashmir.”

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Anuradha Gupta, Director, School Education, Jammu, Government of Jammu & Kashmir, said, “This session will immensely help the teachers in Jammu as they have not been exposed to the modern way of education and teaching. Through this training we intend to pass on modern modes of education and training to our children in schools here bringing modern techniques of education that has so far not been possible. We appreciate the efforts taken by the Ampersand Group in launching this initiative in this part of the state.”

Dr. Arun Manhas, Project Director, Samagra Shiksha, Government of Jammu & Kashmir said, “We have initiated the online teacher training project on a pilot basis under Samagra Shiksha and had planned to launch similar exercises with teachers across the state. This is part of that initiative. We plan to expand this further to other districts in the state with an aim to cover as many teachers as possible so that children across the state are benefitted. We want our teachers from Jammu & Kashmir to be adept with modern methods of teaching and provide the highest quality of training to our teachers which in turn will benefit our students.”

Mr. Vinesh Menon, CEO - Education, Skilling & Consulting Services, Ampersand Group said, “We are delighted to partner with Samagra Shiksha to conduct the training programmes and we are committed to extend this training project to the maximum possible number of teachers in the state so that they can be trained in the modern methods of education. The online training will also be helpful in the times of the pandemic where physical training sessions are not possible and benefit teachers across Jammu and later in other parts of the state.”

The objectives of the training programme are application of knowledge gained in pre-school classroom and demonstration of skills achieved while doing the course as well as prepare lesson plans. It also plans to demonstrate theoretical perspective in the classroom activities and identify and facilitate children with special needs. The programme also aims to train teachers to plan and manage functioning of a pre-school and administer appropriate safety and security measures in a preschool.

Ampersand Group’s Eduspark has been extensively partnering the central and state governments across India undertaking public-private partnership projects by providing infrastructure, teacher training, content development along with several e-learning modules in K12 schooling. Its recent projects include those with the Government of Punjab, Ministry of Women & Child Development in Nashik, Maharashtra, Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, Central Tibetan School Administration among others.

Ampersand Group: Ampersand Group is a global leader in providing complete solutions in school operations and end-to-end school management services to private institutions and government-run Public-Private Partnership projects in several developing nations across the world. The Ampersand Group was founded in 2004 by Mr. RustomKerawalla, a renowned Edupreneur with a vision to transform the educational ecosystem through consistent innovation and use of emerging technologies; to build a modern preschool and K12 education systems, which are equitable and accessible to all. The Group showcases its excellence in the K12 education through its flagship brand - VIBGYOR Group of Schools, a state-of-the-art institution built with a vision of providing high-quality education to young minds for their holistic growth in today’s times. Today, Ampersand is also one of the leading PPP partners in the national government’s endeavour of transforming its Anganwadi and Balwadi’s. The group is currently responsible for providing nearly 700 municipal Balwadi’s in Maharashtra with innovative interventions such as theme-based lessons, usage of new-age technology and a structured age-appropriate curriculum, while targeting multi age-group students.

Samagra Shiksha: The Union Budget, 2018-19, has proposed to treat school education holistically without segmentation from pre-nursery to Class 12. Samagra Shiksha - an overarching programme for the school education sector extending from pre-school to class 12 has been, therefore, prepared with the broader goal of improving school effectiveness measured in terms of equal opportunities for schooling and equitable learning outcomes. It subsumes the three erstwhile Schemes of SarvaShikshaAbhiyan (SSA), RashtriyaMadhyamikShikshaAbhiyan (RMSA) and Teacher Education (TE). This sector-wide development programme/scheme would also help harmonise the implementation mechanisms and transaction costs at all levels, particularly in using state, district and sub-district level systems, and resources, besides envisaging one comprehensive strategic plan for the development of school education at the district level. The shift in the focus is from project objectives to improving systems-level performance and schooling outcomes which will be the emphasis of the combined Scheme along-with incentivizing States towards improving the quality of education.