A push towards science-based learning

Neha Saini

Tribune news service

Amritsar, October 28

Pushing for building a scientific temperament and encouraging innovation-based practical knowledge, the district Education Department, in line with state-wide reforms in education, has now planned to step up their science-based programmes for students.

The district Education Department has set up National Green Corps in all its 418 upper primary schools in the district that encourage students to work towards finding sustainable lifestyle solutions through scientific knowledge. The Education Department has also been successfully undertaking scientific projects under the Children Science Congress that the Punjab State Council for Science and Technology has been conducting as a nodal agency, winning the first prize in the state for two years in a row.

Rising to the occasion, science teachers from schools in the district have been also mentoring students to come up and develop innovations under Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) awards, is an innovative programme sponsored and managed by the Department of Science and Technology, GOI.

Narinder Singh, district academic coordinator, who has been heading science projects being developed by students, said they will soon be providing workshops and trainings to all students under various science programmes being offered by the Centre and state governments.

“We have been introducing various research and science-based learning programmes in government schools to incline students towards the subject. We have also, for the first time, distributed maths and science kits in some schools running successful projects in the science.”

Singh, who is this year’s state award winner for his contribution towards establishing science-based learning programmes, said their project on creating organic manure form kitchen waste won in the state under Children Science Congress as this year’s theme was on environment sustainability.

“The project was being helmed by Anmol, a student of Class VIII, from Government Senior Secondary School, Kot Khalsa, and mentored by her science teacher Balwinder Kaur and myself. The project is published on similar pattern as research journals are published, in an annual science gazette by the Punjab State Council for Science and Technology (PSCST). For our student, who comes from a BPL family, to have her work published at such young age is a great encouragement to pursue a career in research and science,” he says.

Apart from several individual projects that Narinder has been mentoring, students from several government schools in the district have recently won accolades in scientific innovations. Earlier this year, Arshdeep Singh, 16, a student of Government Middle School, Bhoewali, was selected for the Inspire Award, which is given by the Department of Science and Technology, GOI, to encourage and develop innovations in the field of science. He had developed a prototype of a low-cost air-purifying system with the help of his mentor Pankaj Sharma, who is also a science teacher at his school.

Arshdeep comes from a poor family and aspires to become an engineer. Similarly, science clubs under the mentorship of respective science teachers at government schools in rural areas including Patalpuri, Jabbowal, Meerankot and Abdal are helping students in understanding the basics of science through practical application.