The Hindu : New Delhi News : Rs.51-lakh award for best higher secondary school teacher

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Sunday, Aug 10, 2008
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Rs.51-lakh award for best higher secondary school teacher

Staff Reporter

“Guruvar Awards” in recognition of teachers making a difference to children, schools

To target over 3,000 schools, 144,000 teachers, 57 lakh students
Nominees should be teachers working for at least five years

NEW DELHI: At a time when teachers have been demanding better pay packages in order to attract and retain talent in the profession, this could come as some good news. A private trust has announced rewards worth Rs.2 crore for teachers which honour the “Best Teacher” with a whopping Rs.51 lakh.

Varkey GEMS Foundation, a trust instituted by the owners of GEMS Education, announced the award programme for teachers – “Guruvar Awards” – over the weekend. The awards will be in recognition of teachers going that extra mile and making a difference to individual children and their schools.

The total corpus for the awards is more than Rs.2 crore with the top honour for the “Best Teacher” fetching the winner a neat Rs.51 lakh.

The broad categories under the award will be: “Number One Principal”, “Number One Teacher”, “Outstanding New Teacher” and “Number One Teacher from a State Board/Regional Board”.

“The programme will target over 3,000 schools, 144,000 teachers and 57 lakh students. It will be one of the highest monetary honours in the profession, giving a stimulus to the teaching industry. The teaching fraternity is undervalued and not many people want to take up this profession,” said Sunny Varkey, founder and chairman of the GEMS Education at a press conference.

Nominees for the Guruvar Awards should be serving teachers in any field who have been employed for at least five years by an accredited higher secondary school. Teachers can be nominated by their school, students, their parents and colleagues. Interested candidates can visit www.guruvarawards.com . Nominations will open in the next few weeks and the first edition of the awards will be held next year.

Shashi Tharoor, the former United Nations Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information, who is on the advisory board and a jury member for the new awards programme, lamented the uneven progress in education made by the country.

“The commitment on the part of the society to tackle education tasks is lacking. There is a shortfall of 25 lakh teachers. We have made some progress and gender gaps in terms of literacy are closing, but it is not enough,” he said. “We have to realise the importance of human capital. In this globalised world, illiteracy is a self-imposed handicap. India has the worst pupil-teacher ratio in the world. Teachers are under-paid and under-appreciated,” he added

The other members of the jury include: Director-General of The Energy Resources Institute, India, R.K. Pachauri; Chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education, Ashok Ganguly; and Vice-Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University, V. N. Rajasekharan Pillai.

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