TIL Desk Lucknow/ Over 1200 teachers of 200 government schools in Uttar Pradesh vowed to implement a disruptive FLN pedagogy ALfA or Accelerating Learning for All in their schools on the second and last day of the Teacher Empowerment Program that concluded here today at City Montessori School, Gomti Nagar Extension Campus.
The two-day program imparted practical sessions to government school teachers on how to boost Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) outcomes for all primary-aged children using principles of ALfA, an extensively researched transformative pedagogy developed by Dr. Sunita Gandhi, Founder, DEVI Sansthan, and former Economist, The World Bank. Significantly, the teachers pledged to integrate ALfA in their curriculum.
Minister of State for Education, UP, Shri Sandeep Singh graced the occasion as the Chief Guest. Terming DEVI’s Teacher Empowerment Program as “a welcome move”, Shri Singh said, “The ALfA initiative by DEVI Sansthan will surely contribute to scaling up FLN results rapidly. Time is not on our side. NIPUN Bharat goals of universal FLN have to be met quickly. We need swift, research-based, scalable and replicable methods like ALfA by DEVI Sansthan which can accelerate FLN outcomes for all children,” underlined the Minister.
Echoing similar sentiments Shri Alok Ranjan, Former Chief Secretary, UP, and Special Guest on the occasion encouraged the teachers to embrace change. He said, “Current methods are not producing the dramatic results we need to meet the targets of universal FLN as per National Education Policy 2020 and also Sustainable Development Goal 4. I am familiar with Dr Gandhi’s path-breaking work, ALfA has the potential to make India literate and numerate in months, not years.”
IAS Vijay Kiran Anand, Director General Basic and Secondary Education, and eminent Guest of Honour said, “After remarkable results of ALfA in the Shamli District of UP, we have signed an MOU with DEVI Sansthan to implement its disruptive FLN pedagogy in 15 districts of Uttar Pradesh covering 3000 schools in the next session, beginning with three districts in this academic session itself. This Teacher Empowerment over two days will surely inspire the teachers to embrace change and adopt these transformative methods to accelerate FLN for all children quickly.”
DEVI Sansthan was approached by the Union Ministry of Education, to implement ALfA in two of the low performing districts of India, Shamli in Uttar Pradesh and Sambalpur in Odisha. Besides in-person training, DEVI is all set to train the nation’s teachers in free MOOT or Massive Open Online Training, to greatly amplify the impact of its pedagogy on FLN.
