Ranjitsinh Disale, the Maharashtra village teacher who won the Global Teacher Prize 2020, has now been appointed as an education adviser with the World Bank. As one of his first projects with the international organisation, Disale is devising a strategy to make schools across the world safer for kids.
Citing examples of the recent Israel-Palestine conflict, and an attack on a school in Afghanistan, Disale said, “Whenever there is a clash between nations or troops or a fight in conflict areas, there are attacks on school buildings. Schools are not a place to attack. With the World Bank, I plan to start an initiative where all organisations and world leaders would come together and agree to mark schools as safe spaces. I wish to start a campaign where people and organisations will be made aware and schools will be marked as a green-cross area to ensure such spaces are not attacked during conflicts. We plan to propose this to UNESCO."
Speaking to News18.com, he said that his experience of working in a low-resource school will help him bring context while framing policies related to education at the World Bank and ensure the guidelines are made for everyone. Disale will be working with the World Bank as an education adviser from June 2021 to June 2024.
Another programme he will be involved in is the Coach Project, which will work towards training in-service teachers. During his tenure as a government school teacher in a Maharashtra village, too, he had trained over 1,000 teachers.
This programme by the World Bank will address the issues of lack of “good teachers". Speaking in the Indian context, Disale said, “We have not invested in teachers as much. More investment is needed to improve the working conditions of teachers, their personal and professional development. If we focus on the right to the professional development of teachers along with the Right to Education, it would also improve the quality of teaching."
In video | Watch Ranjitsinh Disale’s work which got him global recognition
One of the acute cases of lack of training was seen during the pandemic when teachers tried to implement the offline mode of teaching in an online context, he pointed out. “We have not changed our teaching strategies and methodologies for online classes. A student cannot be made to sit and look at a screen for two hours. Teachers are dependent on the lecture mode of teaching which is not successful in holding the attention of students in online classes. Apart from students who do not have access to devices due to lack of relevant teaching practices, those who attended classes also have suffered academic losses," he said.
Citing a WHO report, Disale said that if a school is shut down for three months, it will impact 1.5 academic years of students. Now, we are staring at a much bigger loss, he said.
He suggested that instead of making teachers as sources of information, during the pandemic, students should be given small projects which are relevant in their local context. In these cases, parents can become the source of learning and knowledge for students, said Disale.
Best known for his initiative to embed QR codes in school books (which were later adopted by NCERT for the entire nation), Disale says he will now ensure the policies he adopted at the school level have a global outreach.
He was awarded for not only increasing the enrolment ratio in his schools and improving grades and academic performance of students but also because he acted as a catalyst in reducing early marriages of girls in Paritewadi village in Maharashtra.
His initiatives adopted at the village school will continue despite Disale working at an international level, as he claims to have developed a system that is in “autopilot mode" and works even if a person is taken out of the system.
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