Presidential awards for schools
The Presidential Awards Program is hosted by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) India, a joint venture of Future Schools Foundation with ISTE in the United States. The joint venture was established in December 2004 in a ceremony attended by Or. Richard Haynes, Consul General United States in Chennai. Symposiums will be held in six centres beginning with Chennai on April 1 to help identify the schools that will qualify for the awards.
ISTE India is the largest organisation of educational leaders in India and is expanding into new states at the rate of one chapter a month. ISTE in the US is one the largest societies for professional educators and has over 80 national and international affiliates, seven national special interest groups and a membership of over 100,000 educators.
Future Schools Foundation, in its endeavour to prepare India for global leadership in the 21st century, has undertaken several strategic initiatives to create Programs, Processes, and Organizations that will lead to the transformation of India's schools.
Annamalai Muthiah, Future Schools Foundation chairman, said, "We must have vision, and we must have action to realise that vision. For me, the vision includes every child in India having an equal chance to excel in school, and thereafter in life." The most important initiative towards realising the vision is the creation of the year-long annual Presidential A wards for Transforming Education: Schooling for the 21st Century.
Inspired by the President of India, A P J Abdul Kalam, the awards seek to take pockets of excellence found in district, state, national, international schools and use a familiar mass participation vehicle to showcase, recognise, enhance effectiveness, establish standards, and spread its use across the larger community of schools.
The Presidential Awards for Transforming Education is the first and only programme that uses a global vision as the foundation for the evaluation, allowing for objective assessment in terms of transformation for progress towards the vision, Annamalai said.
The hosting of the annual Presidential Awards for Transforming Education is part of a process of building peer-to-peer relationships between private and government schools leaders culminating in an annual International Summit for School Education. The first summit is to be held at Pragati Maidan, Delhi in 2006, where the National Awards will be announced as the outcome from the district, state and national participation.
Structure of the Academic Awards for Excellence: The categories of potential excellence are to be identified by educators at a series of symposiums to be held Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Uttaranchal, where ISTE India has established itself.
The symposiums are to be held over 10 days, starting from April 1 in Chennai, and followed by Coimbatore, Kochi, Bangalore, New Delhi and Dehradun. By June 2005 the initial nominations for the various award categories will be made at the district- and state-level in the existing membership chapters, and in the new chapters that will be established in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and
Jharkand.
Eminent educators and leaders of India are to be the panel and use the objective process of assessment in a year-long study of the nominated schools to evaluate and compare the extent of contribution to transformation offered by each nominated school, towards the global vision.
Dr Leslie S. Conery, Deputy CEO of ISTE, said the expected outcome of this initiative was as follows:
The process of participation in the nominating, evaluating, assessing, and supporting of the search for, finding of and recognition of excellence is to create awareness of possible change for all participants.
It is expected that the public awareness of the schools selected in the various categories of excellence will create popular demand among parents and students for their own schools to rise to the demonstrated standards.
Such potential unleashing of the "bottom of the pyramid" power of transformation through emulation and peer pressure is expected to power the transformation of schools at a more rapid rate than otherwise possible.
Effective dissemination of the standards, excellent performance, and the heightening of expectations among parents and students require participation of major institutions within India among the press, corporate, good citizens and public servants. It is expected that the progressive and forward looking groups of India's complex society will join in this effort to transform schools in India.
The core knowledge being used in each situation is recognition of the need for those involved in the various pockets of excellence within India and globally to link together their efforts and experiences using the networking and communication capabilities now available through online conferencing and personal face-to-face discussions.
This, coupled with a vision of a transformed India, drives the effort to motivate, inform, create, disseminate and learn that has resulted in the foundation being put in place for major qualitative changes in India's social landscape. The partnerships being created on the recognition of mutual commitment to positive change and excellence promise to create a "critical mass" of change that will prove critical in creating a level playing field for the young of the countryside and the city in the India of 2010 onwards.
The Chennai symposium is to be held at the Connemara Hotel, Friday, April 1, from 2.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.
