Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia laid the foundation stone for a new ‘District Institute of Education & Training’ (DIET) on Thursday at the Baburam School campus in Shahdara.
After restructuring of the Delhi State Council of Education Research & Training (SCERT) and DIETs last year, this is the first major expansion of the DIET institutions. The new DIET in Shahdara would be the 10th such institute in the city for teacher education and training.
Addressing the gathering, Kejriwal hailed Delhi’s education reforms and applauded education minister Sisodia, officials of the education department, teachers and principals for putting Delhi on the world map for its high quality government school education system.
Narrating the journey of the education reform, Kejriwal said, “Four and a half years ago, Delhi gave ordinary people like us the responsibility of running the city. When we took over, the city’s social infrastructure was crumbling, whether it was schools, hospitals, water or power supply,” he said.
Kejriwal said that the education machinery was completely battered; school buildings were in dilapidated condition and teachers were low on motivations. “Many private schools were running like a mafia, extorting high fees from parents without government regulation. We developed the infrastructure to ensure that all children - rich or poor - have access to high quality education but we were nervous,” he said.
The Chief Minister said that after coming to power, the government started improving the basic amenities. “First, we improved and expanded school buildings, enhanced security, upgraded basic infrastructure like toilets and water supply. Our focus was on making the environment conducive to learning. We doubled the education budget in our first budget itself. But this was the easier part,” he added.
Reaffirming his belief that the one of the most import thing was to impart the government school teachers with world class training, the CM said, I always believed that world class training for our government schools teachers was very important. So, we started with getting them trained at the best institutions across the world.
Lauding the efforts of Sisodia and his team of education officers, teachers and principals, the chief minister said, “I congratulate the entire team which undertook many measures to improve teacher morale and capacity. Large scale teacher trainings was started in Delhi, with both teachers and principals were sent abroad for advanced training. Earlier, only politicians and high ranking officials would travel abroad for such purposes, but this was the first time the real stakeholders were sent abroad for training,” he said.
Commenting on the impact of Delhi’s success, Kejriwal said, “Countries around the world learn from Finland in matters of education, but the entire country learns from Delhi and this is just the beginning of our journey,”
Laying out the government’s achievements in the higher education sector, Sisodia said that the Delhi government has opened 13 new undergraduate colleges in the last 4.5 years. This DIET will be college number 14, and number 15 will be another DIET which we will be launching soon at Defence Colony, he said.
The Deputy Chief Minister also added that with the new DIET, we are opening two new centres for teachers training; One at Shahdara and another at Defence Colony. “This will train 200 students who pass-out of 12th class for teaching. Delhi Government currently has a capacity of 1040 seats for 12th pass-outs who apply for teachers training in the city spread across the nine centres operational presently. The addition will further add to the availability of number of seats for teachers training,” he added.
Informing about a new world class teachers training University in Delhi, the deputy Chief Minister said that a teachers training university is soon going to come up in Delhi. “The Delhi Government is also coming up with a state of the art world class teachers training University in the city for world class training of teachers in the city. This will add up to the strength and the overall quality improvement in the field of teachers training in Delhi,” Sisodia said.