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(The Gist of PIB) NISHTHA Capacity Building Programme

(THE GIST OF PIB) NISHTHA Capacity Building Programme

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), recently collaborated on a joint mission for the NISHTHA capacity-building programme for Eklavya school teachers and principals.
Under the programme, teachers and principals from 120 Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRSs) from 3 States (Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh) participated in the first batch of the programme.

NISHTHA stands for National Initiative for School Heads’ and Teachers’ Holistic Advancement.
NISHTHA is a capacity-building programme for improving the quality of school education through integrated teacher training.
It aims to build competencies among all the teachers and school principals at the elementary stage.
It was launched by the Department of School Education and Literacy as a national mission under the Samagra Shiksha Scheme in 2019-20.

To motivate and equip teachers to encourage and foster critical thinking in students, handle diverse situations and act as first-level counsellors. It offers standardized training modules developed at the national level for all States and UTs.
Teachers will get awareness and develop their skills on various aspects related to
Learning Outcomes
Competency-Based learning and Testing
Personal-social qualities
Inclusive Education
ICT in teaching-learning including Artificial Intelligence

The scheme of Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRSs) was introduced in the year 1997-98 with an objective to provide quality middle and high-level education to Scheduled Tribe (ST) students in remote areas in order to enable them to avail of reservation in high and professional educational courses and get jobs in government and public and private sectors.
The schools focus not only on academic education but on the all-round development of the students. Each school has a capacity of 480 students, catering to students from Class VI to XII.
It has been decided that by the year 2022, every block with more than 50% ST population and at least 20,000 tribal persons, will have an EMRS.
EMRS are set up in States/UTs with grants under Article 275(1) of the Constitution of India.
The scheme is being implemented by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

The capacity-building programme will help fulfill the long-standing vision of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) to achieve academic excellence in Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRSs).
It also trains the teachers and principals, which would help in the holistic development of the school, students, and faculty members.
The programme aims to develop teachers as first-level counsellors for students.
The capacity-building program also aims to build competencies among teachers and school principals and improve the quality of school education through Integrated Teacher Training.
It also helps in developing a stress-free school-based assessment system that focuses on the development of learning competencies.
Under the training, the teachers learn how to adopt activity-based learning and move away from traditional learning to competency-based learning.
The training programme is also in line with the Government of India’s National Education Policy (NEP-2020) that aims to continuously expand to meet the needs of enriched teaching-learning processes for quality education.