CHENNAI: To prepare government school students in Tamil Nadu for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and other national-level competitive exams, the State government has planned a special training session for teachers from July 10.
Despite opposing such exams for years, the State government initiative will have pre-trained mentors, college professors, resource persons and subject experts handling classes based on National Council for Educational Research & Training (NCERT) and State board content.
Three government agencies under the State school education department — Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and State Council for Educational Research & Training — will work together to complete this in-service training programme.
Soon after receiving the administrative sanction on Monday, the RMSA came out with a detailed plan on the same day. Nearly 34,000 teachers across the State will be a part of this programme in 2017-18. “Focus will be given towards training Science, Maths and English teachers in Class IX-X. Content for these training programmes have been revised to suit the needs of students in their higher course,” a senior RMSA official told Express.
The programme is designed in such a way that teachers can help students access their lower order thinking skills (LOTS) at the primary level and trigger the higher order thinking skills (HOTS) in the higher secondary level, the official added. “Once HOTS is triggered, students can clear any national-level exam”.
As part of preparations, special programmes were held at Yercaud, Salem and Cuddalore in 2016. Mentors and subject experts, who will be handling classes, were trained by the State-level Resource Group on the revised training content. “Each subject was divided into seven domains and, for each and every one, a contour map linkage with other classes were explained. Concept maps with themes and sub-themes to enrich skills were also discussed,” said another school education department official who was part of these meetings.
Unlike previous years, where in-service training sessions went on till the third and final semester, the State school education department will be winding up these sessions by August 14, ie, before the quarterly examinations this year. By this, students will not be left in the lurch without adequate teachers to handle classes, officials claimed.
However, the key will be to monitor teachers consistently on how they trained students on concepts which they learned in these sessions and efforts have been taken to keep a tab over this, the RMSA official added.
The RMSA had earlier conducted an impact study on previous training sessions. Since last year’s focus was on Information-Communication-Technology, the study was also conducted online and results were shared across the State through social media and other online platforms.
The study concluded that drastic improvement can be seen in teachers who attended HOTS-related training last year.
