Mysore:

The rural kids studying at the government schools in Tirumakudlu Narsipur will get some special lessons.

They will be told the importance of leadership and their skills will be honed by their head masters or head mistress, who will be trained by experts to empower them to take lead in their assignments. An initiative of the Azim Premji Foundation aimed at improving the quality of primary education, the Vivekananda Institute for Leadership Development (V-LEAD), which is  Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM), will train the head of the primary and higher primary schools in the district asking them to take leadership in addressing the issues locally. Be it addressing the concerns raised by the parents or challenged related to infrastructure, the HMs will be trained to handle them independently so that such issues doesn’t affect the education of the kids.

The School Leadership Development Program (SLDP) is devised based on the premise that the quality of leadership directly influences the quality of education imparted. Over the next two years, HMs and cluster resource persons (CRPs) will be trained. The CRPs are tasked with monitoring 10 schools. The training sessions were formally launched on Thursday at the V-LEAD. In the first installment, HMs and CRPs in T Narsipur will be trained. The Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan and UNICEF are supporting the SLDP. The Azim Premji Foundation leader M Manjunath said at the inauguration that the quality of education primarily depends on the teachers and there is need for capacity building among the teachers serving in the government schools. The SVMY founder Dr R Balasubramaniam said teachers should stay put at the villages for increased focus on their students.

The Block Education Officer (BEO) will select the HMs and the CRPs for the batches, who will have in-house training and also visit the fields. “We will ask the trainees to locate the challenges they are facing and work on it when they are here,” the V-LEAD’s team leader (Education Leadership Management) Bellegowda said. The training sessions are spread over 15 weeks and they will have in-house training for 22 days. The Azim Premji Foundation has selected us for the project, he told The Times of India. The V-LEAD will implement the SLDP in Mysore, Chamarajnagar, Kodagu and Mandya districts starting with Mysore’s three educational blocks-T Narsipur, Mysore rural and Krishnarajnagar.

There are 229 HMs in T Narsipur taluk, who will undergo training first. The HMs who will have at least 4 years of service are favoured since they need time to implement what they pick up during training at their schools.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / Home> City> Mysore / HM Aravind, TNN / August 02nd, 2012