Other States - Orissa   

Afghan students to study in Bhubaneswar

BHUBANESWAR: Come July the capital city will host a group of students from a country with which Orissa had hardly had any connection before.

They are neither coming as tourists nor are they part of any short-term youth exchange programme, but they will be spending full two years here to learn the nuances of teaching.

Regional Institute of Education (RIE), Bhubaneswar, under National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) will impart teacher training to 30 students from war-ravaged Afghanistan, for which groundwork has just begun.

In a videoconference held on Wednesday, a representative of Afghanistan government, top officials of NCERT and authorities of four RIEs located at Bhopal, Ajmer, Mysore and Bhubaneswar discussed accommodating a batch of 120 students from Afghanistan and train them as teachers. Every centre would house 30 students.

“The course will be Diploma in Teachers’ Education for elementary level.

We will soon be developing syllabus emphasising on pedagogy,” said Professor Hrusikesh Senapati of department of education of RIE, Bhubaneswar here on Thursday.

According to RIE campus grapevine, everybody has mysterious impressions associated with Afghanistan such as clan loyalty and warfare, living in inhospitable highlands, internecine feuding and rise and fall of Talibanism.

But the news of Afghanistan students coming to the campus has made each one excited here.

As the per planning which is in very initial stage, students, about 27 boys and three girls, having qualification of higher secondary would be given accommodation in hostels of RIE, Bhubaneswar.

“Challenges are many. Their food habits would be obviously different from Indians.

We could spare required number of rooms for them on our premises. But everything depends on instructions from NCERT,” Professor Senapati said.

The proposed teachers training programme for Afghanistan students would be the first of its kind regular course for foreign students to be handled by RIE, Bhubaneswar, which offers pre-service professional training programmes.

Perhaps this programme would carry forward the legacy of some college education that the present Afghan President Hamid Karzai had received in India, quipped a RIE staffer here.

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