HRD minister Smriti Irani is lighting the lamp at the launch of a teacher education portal in New Delhi on Thursday. Photo: PTI
New Delhi: Human resource and development (HRD) minister Smriti Irani on Thursday launched ‘Prashikshak’, a teacher education portal for District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs).
The portal which has been developed by the HRD ministry in collaboration with the Central Square Foundation, a policy think tank focused on improving quality of school education, is an open online platform for collecting and reporting data from all DIETs which will help in the establishment of a strong monitoring mechanism.
It has been launched to help DIETs make informed decisions about their institutes and compare the performance of their institute against other DIETs by facilitating online reporting of data. It will also help aspiring teachers to make decision about which institute to join. The portal provides insightful analysis which will strengthen the teacher education scheme and allows states to spot areas where resources can be targeted.
Prashikshak users will comprise pre-service teacher educators, DIET principals and faculty, policy makers at district, state government and national level, and the general public. Currently, the portal compiles 800 data points yearly from all 646 DIETs. It will expand to cover all 18,839 government Teacher Education Institutes (TEIs) including Colleges of Teacher Education (CTEs), Institutes of Advanced Study in Education (IASEs) and Strengthening of State Councils of Educational Research and Training (SCERTs).
The portal will strengthen the teacher education system in four ways: It will equip government officials with data for decision making, support innovation in teachers education, empower aspiring teachers and increase transparency.
DIETs were formed under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme on Teacher Education (CSSTE) and are aimed at offering pre-service and in-service teacher training programmes for Government elementary school teachers. At present, there are 588 DIETs with an intake of 98,052 students and sanctioned faculty strength of 12,647.
[“Source-Livemint”]
