STIR Education (Schools and Teachers Innovating for Results), an NGO who works with teachers and principals in affordable private and government schools to identify innovative educational practice, and then to take them to scale has launched its 2013 campaign in India after a successful pilot programme in 2012. STIR was founded with the sole purpose to improve educational outcomes for the world’s poorest children by seeking out innovative practice and taking them to scale through partner organisations such as National and State Government and NGOs.
Recently STIR Education conducted its first Teacher Innovative Conference for 2013-14 in Yamuna Vihar, East Delhi. The conference was attended by over 170 teachers and principals from over 45 affordable private schools. The teachers were taken through a range of activities and workshops to identify their own creative and innovative ideas that are improving the quality of educational activities in their schools. STIR has planned additional conferences scheduled from August-October ’13 throughout East and South Delhi for the academic year 2013-14.
The campaign along with visits to 1200 schools by the STIR Team will include 8 ‘super conferences’ in Delhi where teachers and principals will have the opportunity to share good practice and apply to be a STIR Innovator. A pilot conference early this year saw 300 teachers attend a conference with inspiring outcomes. The conferences will also result in the formation of STIR Networks where teachers will meet each month to continue to share practice and innovate for the benefit of their students. This years innovations will be selected on 15th October. The search will be pan India as partner organisations will be conducting searches in several other Indian states.
Siddharth Singh, India Programme Director said, “Our pilot programme gave us real confidence in the appetite among teachers to be members of STIRs teacher innovation network. These networks involve regular meetings where teachers can discuss problems which they are facing, adapt and implement these micro-innovations to solve problems, and see tangible results on educational outcomes for their children. By ensuring that the best micro-innovations from within local communities are uncovered, this approach ensures that local problems are met with the best locally relevant, teacher-driven solutions.”
He further said, “Over the next three years in India we aim to impact 12,000 teachers in STIR and partner-supported networks across the country. We also hope to touch a further 28,000 teachers through the scale-up of the micro-innovations identified. Overall, STIR therefore seeks to impact over a million children and create India’s largest network of committed and innovative teachers.”
