Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu will be conferring the National Teachers' Awards at a function on September 5, on the occasion of National Teachers' Day and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be interacting with the recipients on September 4 (i.e the eve of National Teachers' Day). This year, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) has revised the guidelines for the selection of Teachers for National Awards (2017). The basic premise now, according to a statement from HRD Ministry, 'is that the new scheme should be transparent, fair, and reward demonstrated excellence and performance and has been inspired by recent innovations in major national awards'.
6692 applications were received from teachers from all over the country after, for the first time, the teachers were allowed apply directly and nominate themselves for the award (this feature did not exist in the earlier scheme).
From now onwards, the ministry said, all regular teachers will be eligible to apply and no minimum years of service is required. This has enabled meritorious young teachers to apply (under the earlier scheme, only teachers with minimum 15 years of service were eligible), the statement added.
Self-nominations from teachers were invited online on www.mhrd.gov.in.The Web Portal was developed by the Administrative Staff College of India(ASCI).
The number of awards has been rationalized to 45 and the ministry said this has been necessary to restore the prestige of the awards (under the earlier scheme the number of awardees had crossed 300).
Out of all the applications received, every district selected the 3 best teachers and forwarded these to the committee under the State / UT Secretary of Education who made a shortlist. A total of 152 nominations were finally received from all States, UTs and Organisations.
The final selection was done by an independent Jury. The criteria adopted was to select those teachers who had shown innovation in their work and had added value to the school and to their students.
These nominated teachers gave a presentation before an independent Jury comprising a senior educationist, during 3rd week of August, 2018. This ensured that all of them were given an opportunity to place before the jury their contribution and the work done by them.
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