President Murmu honours 82 teachers with national awards
Every child who ever felt small in a large classroom, every first-generation learner who walked into a city school still carrying the dust of a village one, has at some point been rescued by a teacher who noticed. President Droupadi Murmu built her Teachers’ Day address around that quiet act of noticing, as she conferred National Awards on teachers from across the country at a function in New Delhi on Friday.
Speaking at the event, Murmu said education remains the most effective means of realising the constitutional ideal of equality of opportunity. She said India’s achievement of a negligible primary school dropout rate had been made possible through the sustained efforts of teachers, and she commended them for this national success.
Murmu said school education forms the foundation of the entire education system. She said knowledge and skills can be acquired at any stage of life, but lessons in good conduct instilled during childhood prove far more lasting. She said teachers, by diligently attending to the intellectual, physical and moral development of children in early grades, help prepare future generations of capable students and responsible citizens.
The President spoke at length about the diverse backgrounds students come from, noting that many belong to economically disadvantaged families, some are first-generation learners, others move from ordinary village schools into large city institutions, some are naturally shy, some possess considerable talent but lack self-confidence, and some are children with special needs. She said it falls specifically on teachers to instil confidence in such students and lift up anyone who, for whatever reason, feels inadequate in the classroom.
Murmu said academic excellence, skill development and entrepreneurship carry enormous weight in the country’s development trajectory. She said establishing India as the skill capital of the world and transforming it into a knowledge superpower remain among the nation’s key priorities.
She said the country is moving toward the goal of building a Viksit Bharat, a developed India, and that this goal can only be realised through a world-class education system. She described teachers as the ones who breathe life into that system, and said the collective effort must ensure that not a single student in the country is deprived of access to quality education. She said teachers should work to instil knowledge, inspiration, morality and sensitivity in every student through their affection and dedication.
The National Awards to Teachers are conferred annually on Teachers’ Day, observed on September 5 to mark the birth anniversary of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the country’s first Vice President and second President, who was also a distinguished philosopher and educator.
The awards recognise outstanding contributions by teachers to the field of school education, with recipients selected through a rigorous process involving multiple levels of screening across states and union territories.
Friday’s ceremony brought together teachers from different parts of the country who were felicitated for their contributions to shaping students, particularly those from underserved or first-generation learning backgrounds, a theme that ran through the President’s address as she repeatedly returned to the responsibility teachers carry toward children who might otherwise be overlooked.
The event underscored the Government’s continuing emphasis on education as central to its broader development agenda, with Murmu’s remarks tying the recognition of individual teachers to larger national goals around skill development and India’s ambitions to become a global knowledge hub.
As the ceremony concluded, the President’s message centred on a simple but recurring idea, that the true measure of an education system lies not in its infrastructure or policy documents, but in the quiet, everyday work of teachers who help a hesitant, uncertain child believe they belong in the room they have walked into.