The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab will send 130 school principals from government schools to Singapore for training in the coming months. It will also send another group of 100 teachers, posted as head teachers, to the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA).
The state education department issued a letter Thursday specifying criteria for selection and a tentative schedule for the proposed training of these 230 teachers. Punjab sent 66 school principals in two batches to Singapore for training in February and March.
According to the letter issued by State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) Director Maninder Singh Sarkaria, in July, a batch of 35 principals will be sent to Principals Academy, Singapore, in June, while another batch of 30 principals will go to National Institute of Education (NIE), also in Singapore, and a group of 50 head teachers will head to IIM Ahmedabad.
The education department plans to send the next batch of 50 head teachers to IIM Ahmedabad in August. In November, the second batch of 35 and 30 principals will go to Principals Academy and NIE, respectively.
Sarkaria said that teachers would be selected for these training sessions via a transparent online selection process, and the application portal would be open from June 2 to 13.
To qualify, teachers must be regular education department employees, have a valid passport and should not have any departmental inquiry/chargesheet pending against them.
“The teachers will be selected based on a rating system — five marks for experience, four for educational qualification, 25 for Annual Confidential Report (ACR), five for state/national award and one for additional diploma or any added qualification,” said Sarkaria.
Earlier this year, a political row erupted over the selection of teachers sent abroad for training after Punjab Governor Banwarilal Purohit wrote to Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann questioning the selection criteria adopted by the education department. Purohit wrote that “complaints were received pointing to certain malpractices and illegalities in the selection process” and that there was “no transparency” in the procedure.
He had asked Mann to send him details of the criteria adopted to select the principals. The row escalated after Mann replied to Purohit that he was answerable only to 3 crore Punjabis who elected him, not the Governor. However, the education department eventually sent the entire records of the selection process to the chief minister’s office, which were further forwarded to the Governor’s office.