TED News Desk, New Delhi: The National Initiative for school heads’ and teachers’ advancement, NISHTHA, a programme introduced by the Government of India in 2019, has provided training to 16,99,931 teachers. Ramesh Pokhriyal, Minister of Education, informed about the same in Lok Sabha, on September 4.
17 lakh teachers trained: NISHTHA and the numbers
The scheme behind the figures is the largest teacher training exercise the ministry has attempted. Launched on 21 August 2019 by the Department of School Education and Literacy, it set out to build the capacities of around 42 lakh elementary teachers and school heads, along with faculty of the State Councils of Educational Research and Training, the district institutes of education and training, and block and cluster resource coordinators, according to a Ministry of Education reply placed before the Rajya Sabha. The first year of face-to-face work closed with the tally of nearly 17 lakh teachers trained. Ramesh Pokhriyal told the house that NISHTHA would keep going despite the pandemic, with the remaining training moved online.
The content of the training is broad by design. The modules take in learning outcomes, school-based assessment, learner-centred pedagogy, the ministry’s newer initiatives in school education and the handling of diverse needs in a single classroom, according to the programme description issued through the Press Information Bureau. The first fully online run of the programme was carried out in Andhra Pradesh after the lockdown ended face-to-face sessions, a pilot for what would later become the national pattern.
“A total of 23,137 Key Resource Persons (KRPs) and State Resource Persons (SRPs) and 16,99,931 school heads and teachers have been trained under NISTHA in 2019-20,” reported the Minister.
The scheme, launched on August 21, aims at building the capabilities of nearly 42 lakh teachers and principals of schools across the country. With the COVID-19 crisis in hindsight, the ministry has also developed an online portal for NISTHA. Moreover, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is conducting Prospective Resource Person training programmes as well. So far, 1500 Key Resource people have been selected, the Minister added.
How the cascade works
NISHTHA runs on a cascade. National and state resource groups are trained first, and those key resource persons then carry the modules out to teachers in their states, which is why the ministry counts its 23,137 resource persons separately from the teachers themselves. The design means the headline figure of 17 lakh teachers trained depends on the quality of a much smaller cadre of trainers, and it also means the programme can switch channels quickly: the same modules that were taught in district halls can be packaged for an online platform when the halls shut.
The CBSE’s parallel work on Prospective Resource Persons, with 1,500 selected by the time of the minister’s answer, extends the same logic to the board’s own affiliated schools. Every layer of the system, from the national resource groups down to a cluster coordinator visiting a village school, is meant to be teaching from the same material, which is the point of running teacher training as one national initiative rather than thirty state schemes.
Additionally, the Center is also using a CBSE podcast called ShikshaVani to provide learning. Owing to the COVID situation adversely affecting the education sector, CBSE has delayed the new academic session, and also cut short some parts of syllabi of various subjects for the current session. Online classes are the norm for the past few months. Web platforms, PM eVIDYA, TV channels, podcasts and radio are among many of the mediums that are being used for online classes.
The government is taking strides towards making life easier for the students, especially in these times of crisis. Such an effort is appreciated, and it is hoped will help India in the long run.
Since then: the whole programme moved to DIKSHA
The online portal the minister trailed became the programme’s main stage within weeks. NISHTHA went fully online on 6 October 2020, run by the National Council of Educational Research and Training on the DIKSHA platform, and by March 2022 around 24 lakh elementary teachers and school heads had been covered through the online version, according to a later ministry reply in the Rajya Sabha. The count of 17 lakh teachers trained that Ramesh Pokhriyal gave in his September answer had been overtaken by the format the pandemic forced on NISHTHA.
The programme then grew past the elementary stage. NISHTHA 2.0 for secondary and senior secondary teachers arrived on DIKSHA on 29 July 2021, aiming at about 10 lakh teachers and school heads through 12 generic and 56 subject-specific modules. NISHTHA 3.0 followed on 7 September 2021, built around foundational literacy and numeracy for teachers from the pre-primary years to Class V, with 12 modules aligned to the NIPUN Bharat mission and nearly 25 lakh intended participants. Ramesh Pokhriyal’s ministry turned what began as a five-figure count of resource persons and a Lok Sabha answer about 17 lakh teachers trained into a standing online machinery that every later teacher training drive has reused.
The shift carried a cost worth recording. A cascade built on residential workshops gives a trainer a room, questions and the chance to correct misunderstanding on the spot; a module on a platform gives scale instead, and the certificate counts are easier to collect than evidence of changed classroom practice. The ministry’s own replies to Parliament measure coverage, not outcomes, which is the honest limit of what the 24 lakh figure can say. What the numbers do establish is reach: by the ministry’s account, a majority of the country’s elementary teaching workforce has now passed through one version of the programme or another, in person or on a screen.
