Over 50,000 primary school teachers from across the country are expected to take part in the national biennial conference of the All India Primary Teachers’ Federation (AIPFT) in Bangalore from Oct 19 to Oct 2l. The theme of the conference will be ‘Stop Child Labour and Provide Educatlion for All’.
Four ‘Shiksha Yatras’ to Spread awareness about the Umon Government’s Sarva Shikshana Abhiyaan (SSA) programme will converge in the City –they will start from Mothihari in Champaran district (Bihar), Attari (punjab) at the Pakistan border, Guwahati Assam and Chennai in TamilNadu, AIPFT Secretary General S Eswaran said.
Speaking to mediapersons to announce this event on Sunday, Eswaran said yatras will cover 21 States. The four streams of the yatra will start in mid-September. It is basically an awareness drive on the status of education in the country and the need to meet the target of education for all by year 2015. Deputy Prime Minister L K Ad- vani has agreed to inaugurate the conference, .while Union Labour Minister Sahib Singh Verma will deliver the keynote address, Eswaran said.
He said that the conference will focus on issues related to spreading literacy to all and garnering the support of both non-Govermental organisations and the world community towards this effort. Representatives from foreign funding agencies and educational fora are also expected to participate. One of the main topics of discussion is the problems of women teachers and girl students, Eswaran said.
While the Union Ministry of.Human Resource Development (MHRD) bas allowed special casual leave to enable teachers to participate in the conference: the MHRD Secretary will also attend the conference. Besides, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) will organising , an exhibition on types of , teaching. co-operative learning, and creative methodologies that can be adopted, besides putting up an audio/ visual display of the procedures in distance education to enable teachers to update themselves in their respective subjects.