Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio on Monday launched three new initiatives under the Department of School Education, the Nagaland Reading Festival, Digital Diary for Government Teachers, and A Question A Day (AQAD).
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- Nagaland Reading Festival
Ever since the National Education Policy prioritized Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, many actors in the education system have implemented programs for basic reading, writing and arithmetic. The NIPUN Bharat initiative has translated this vision into actions for schools and communities. Nagaland, too, has come up with a road map for its journey toward attaining these literacy and numeracy objectives by 2026–27.
The recent launch of the Vidya Amrit initiative by the Ministry of Education, Government of India allows to create achievable milestones in this journey. Vidya Amrit’s focus is on micro-improvements, or small steps that build excellence in schools. Any state-wide effort also has to begin by recognizing the potential activities that school leaders, as experts of their own schools, can do to improve learning outcomes for students.
On the occasion of Teachers’ Day, the State is commencing the ‘Nagaland Reading Festival’ with the Government School principals and headmasters, to convert the road map into reality.
The Nagaland Reading Festival is a state-wide celebration of school leaders’ innovations. Its theme is ‘Love for Reading’. It is an occasion for principals and headmasters to design and implement activities that solve their students’ reading challenges. The goal of the festival is to help students from Grades 1 to 8 read effectively with comprehension.
The festival will be hosted through DIKSHA, which is the national infrastructure for education. It is pertinent at this time to acknowledge Hayishan Odyuo, a student of Class 12 in Assam Valley School Tezpur, who created the logo for the festival.
The Department of School Education, Samagra Shiksha Mission, and SCERT would jointly anchor this initiative. This new initiative also invites the Government school leaders and school teams across Nagaland to participate in the festival and make it a grand success.
DoSE is also working with Mantra 4 Change, a foundation based out of Bangalore on this initiative which is completely sponsored through CSR funding.
- Digital Teacher’s Diary
While teachers also need regular monitoring and supervision of performance of their assigned duties, performing teachers need to be recognized and awarded, and the under-performing teachers need to be supported to develop their capabilities. With the objective that this would help them deliver lessons in a superior manner thereby enhancing learning outcomes for students, the Teacher’s Diary introduced by the Department of School Education in all Government Schools across the State in the year 2020 is a comprehensive tool that would assist and motivate teachers to plan their teaching learning activities efficiently and at the same time serve as a record of assessment of their performance. The ‘Teacher Friendly’ Teacher’s Diary serves as a mirror of their performance.
The physical Teacher’s Diary has now been upgraded into a digital format as the Digital Teacher’s Diary and is being integrated into the Teacher’s App. This would enable the Sub Divisional, District and State level Officials to monitor the class room transactions being carried out in Government Schools across the State on a real time basis. Officials at the recently established Nagaland Education Management and Information System (NEMIS) Control Room at the Directorate of School Education would regularly monitor the implementation and usage of the Digital Teacher’s Diary.
- A Question A Day (AQAD)
The Department of School Education (DoSE), Nagaland, has been focused on aligning the education ecosystem in the state with Competency-Based-Education (CBE). In line with this, the department is trying to initiate multiple initiatives in the state to reform education. DoSE is looking at engaging students actively and is launching one such initiative towards that endeavour.
How do we associate Questions with Fun, Learning, and Curiosity? and not with exams and pressure? How do we encourage students to think creatively while challenging them to also think deeply with questions that seem easy on the surface, but test understanding deeply?
Well, ASSET Question a Day is a free offering by DoSE in collaboration with Educational Initiatives (Ei) for students across the state spanning government and private schools.
Ei-ASSET has been at the forefront of skills-based testing for the last two decades internationally and is often used for performance benchmarking, misconception diagnosis, and measuring the effectiveness of teaching.
AQAD is a set of competency-based questions to test the high-order-thinking skills of students and will evaluate students on their understanding of key concepts. Each question has been carefully curated from a list of questions that show student misconceptions.
AQAD is meant for classes 3 to 9 for various subjects. It is available for English, maths and science for classes 3 and 4. For classes 5 to 9, its available for English, maths, science and social studies.
On the AQAD platform, students of class 3-9 are able to attempt MCQ-type questions that are engaging and stimulating. One question for each class will be presented daily on the Department’s webpage from Monday to Saturday in the order of English – Maths – Science – Maths – Science – Social Studies.
Students can submit their answers as well as use the option to explain their answers. Every day, students can check the correct answer to the previous day’s question and also read the answer explanation which has been chosen as the Best Explanation. The system is designed to reward students for recurring efforts and for getting correct answers in the following manner:
| a) | Every question attempted will fetch 5 diamonds |
| b) | Every correct answer will be rewarded with 10 diamonds |
| c) | The best explanation will receive 50 diamonds |
| d) | At the end of the month, if the student has attempted all the questions of that month, the system will reward him/her with 25 diamonds |
| e) | Finally, an AQAD champ will be declared at the end of every month |
The intent of this initiative is to give students an opportunity to engage with high-quality questions that help them appreciate a deeper understanding of the concepts taught in the classroom.
It is hoped that AQAD will help students understand academic concepts deeply and comprehensively, in addition to providing them with an opportunity to demonstrate their skills at a pan-India level.
Students can access AQAD from the DoSE’s website: https://education.nagaland.gov.in/
