News stories by Vani S. Kulkarni

PHILADELPHIA, July 14 (IPS) - Ask why so many Indian classrooms struggle, and the answers arrive in the language of audit: Too few trained teachers, too many vacancies, weak colleges of education and low accountability. Each of these is real, and each matters. Yet none of them explains a quiet confession a veteran teacher made to me, years into her career, holding a teacher training degree all the while. “Only this program”, she said, “made me realize what my prior training had left out”. The program she was referring to is a small teaching preparation program in Gurugram, North India called I Am A Teacher, or IAAT.

PHILADELPHIA, July 1 (IPS) - India’s new education policy asks a great deal of its teachers. The National Education Policy of 2020 and its NISHTHA (National Initiative for School Heads’ and Teachers’ Holistic Advancement) training scheme, want teachers to be more than deliverers of syllabus. They are to be empowered professionals, agents of change who shape the future of children and, the policy says, of the nation itself. It is a generous and welcome ambition.