NCERT, TAG partner to bolster digital skills of Indian educators

The Indian government's National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and Microsoft global training partner Tech Avant-Garde (TAG) will collaborate to enhance digital skills of educators in Indian schools.

The move is aimed to facilitate a Connected Learning Community (CLC), as per a joint statement.

NCERT, Tech Avant-Garde and Microsoft will collaborate to enhance Digital Transformation and Holistic Learning (DTHL) in education, in accordance with the government’s Digital India campaign and National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

The Digital India campaign of 2015 envisions to create basic information technology and information communication technology infrastructure, delivery of citizen services through platforms such as portals and apps, and digital literacy of all citizens, the statement said.

While TAG will provide Microsoft with course content in the format shared by NCERT under a license, certificate for the course will be jointly offered by NCERT and Microsoft/TAG as per NCERT format.

Beneficiaries of the partnership will include NCERT constituents such as National Institute of Education (NIE), Central Institute of Educational Technology (CIET), as well as other regional institutes.

“NCERT will identify appropriate online courses related to continuous professional development from the bouquet of courses shared by TAG from time to time which will be helpful for teachers to enhance their Digital Skills,” an NCERT spokesperson said in the statement.

NEP 2020 advocates integration of digital education in teaching, learning, assessment, development of e-Contents, research on disruptive technologies, among other areas of emphasis, the spokesperson added. 

“In India there are more than 9.5 million teachers, in the new genre of learning every teacher should – acquire digital skills, understand the knowledge age education and practice digital pedagogy,” Ali Sait, CEO, Tech Avant-Garde, said.

Founded in 2013, TAG claims to be the first company in Indian education sector to partner with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) or online payment of fees in schools and other educational institutions.

With about 18,000 schools uploaded on its platform for fees collections, TAG also has partnerships with school associations that have mandated TAG to transform their member schools into a Connected Learning Community (CLC) vision of UNESCO.

In September 2020, TAG began Knowledge L’avenir Conclave (KLC) webinars in association with Microsoft, Knowledge Key Foundation, LYCEE Corp, Efeeonline and Roshini Social Schooling. By November, it had trained 150,000 teachers from 72,000 schools with a student-teacher-parent population of 76 million.