The State’s teachers have won honours at the Centre for Teacher Accreditation (CENTA) teaching professionals’ Olympiad 2018, held in December. Of the 123 winners from the State, 12 are from government schools. A total of 63 teachers are among the 553 national toppers. The top 100 winners include five government school teachers.
More than 400 schools across 40 cities, towns and villages participated from Tamil Nadu. The State has bagged the top honours with two national subject toppers — Ashwin Guha from Chennai (Secondary School Maths) and Ramalakshmi M. from PUPS S. Velangudi School (Primary Tamil, Maths and EVS).
Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan Senior Secondary School teacher, Lalitha Venkatesh was ranked 95th nationally in Middle School English. Vandana Rathore from Vidya Mandir@Estancia, Chennai, was ranked 62 in Primary English, Maths and EVS. Chennai’s Akshar Arbol International School, Injambakkam, and Vaels International School, along with TVS School in Madurai and The PSBB Millennium School in Coimbatore also had some laurels. CENTA tests core teaching competencies.
Teachers from 10,000 schools across 2,000 locations in the country and Dubai took the test.
Gyaneshwaran Gomathinayagam from The Doon School in Dehradun, a winner, will be awarded the Reliance Foundation Teacher Award with a cash prize of ₹1 lakh. Sarika Chuni from Amity International School in Lucknow, Krishna Baskaran from Chennai Primary School in Rangarajapuram, Ashwin Guha from Chennai, Ramalakshmi M from PUPS S. Velangudi, in Sivaganga, and Samira Saheba from Kapila Khandwala College of Education in Mumbai are among the over 1,000 winners.These teachers will attend the world’s biggest education conference in Dubai and co-author a book on teaching perspectives published by Central Square Foundation.
Krishna Baskaran will be profiled in The Hindu group of publications as the regional topper of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry region. Teaching Professionals’ Olympiad is presented by The Hindu as title sponsor, for the fourth consecutive year.
Managing director and chief executive officer of The Hindu group Rajiv Lochan, who felicitated the winners on Wednesday, said, “The Hindu is very happy to be associated with CENTA TPO and its growing community of over 60,000 committed teaching professionals. I hope to continue seeing media play a big role in making teaching an aspirational and celebrated profession.”
Former advisor to Prime Minister and former Vice-Chairman of TCS S. Ramadorai said he was happy to see CENTA and TPO emerge as a platform for teachers. Director and Head of Reliance Foundation Jalaj Dani said Reliance Foundation’s objective was to benchmark the competencies of outstanding teachers against the well-accepted CENTA standards of teacher performance. Co-Founder of Ashoka University, Pramath Raj Sinha said the olympiad brought back aspiration, recognition and celebration for the teaching profession.