NAGPUR: The man who is known to have inspired actor Aamir Khan’s character of ‘Phunsukh Wangdu’ in the movie ‘3 Idiots’ will now be part of the state’s new international education board.
Sonam Wangchuk, director of Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh, has been nominated to the newly formed governing council which will guide the new board.
Another recognizable face in the 10-member governing council is actress and former Miss
India Swaroop Sampat. A PhD from UK in the field of education, Sampat is a core member of the
NGO Early Childhood Association (ECA).
On the ECA website, Sampat’s testimonial says that ‘she was concerned with the trauma faced by children in the prevalent educational setting in India’. Sampat adds, ‘I believe that what I do in education should help make changes for the better in our society’. Sampat is the wife of BJP MP and actor Paresh
Rawal.
The third, and last, non-government member of the international board is Shaheen Mistri, founder of NGO Teach for India. According to the NGO’s website, Mistri founded Teach for India in 2008 ‘with the vision of providing an excellent education to all children across India by building a pipeline of leaders committed to ending educational inequity’. The site adds that before Teach for India, Shaheen worked to provide quality education to children from low-income communities.
TOI had reported on October 31, 2017 that the state is planning to start a new international board, though the official confirmation came only in January this year. The state’s plan is to affiliate 100 existing government run schools to the board starting 2018-19 academic session to increase quality of education. The plan is to prepare 100 schools in state for international assessment by March 2021. The benchmark for assessments will be
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (
TIMSS) and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).
PISA is a triennial international survey which aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students. TIMSS and PIRLS are both part of core cycle of studies for International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Headquartered in Amsterdam and with a major data processing and research centre in Hamburg, IEA has been conducting international comparative studies of student achievement since 1959
The state’s education department had earlier declared a four-year road map to bring 100 of its schools to international level. The initially chosen 10 schools will be called ‘Ojas’, with every division getting at least one, while the other 90 will be called ‘Tejas’.
