Against the backdrop of a difficult and challenging pandemic year for India’s teachers, the online CENTA Teaching Professionals Olympiad (TPO) 2020 attracted entries from 25,000 teachers in India and 30 countries abroad – Summiya Yasmeen One year on since the Central government ordered shutdown of all education institutions including preschools, schools, colleges and universities to check the spread of the virulent Covid-19 pandemic which has caused 128 million infections and 2.8 million fatalities worldwide and 12 million and 162,000 in India (March 30), the country’s 9 million school teachers have emerged as heroes of the pandemic-battered education system. When schools were ordered to shut down overnight without notice in March 2020, the teachers’ community, especially of 450,000 private schools which host 47.5 percent of the country’s in-school children, responded with unexpected speed to switch to new digital information communication technologies (ICT) to continue their pupils’ education online. Despite their previous record of being slow to warm to the IT revolution that has transformed teaching-learning around the world, the upside of the killer pandemic which has ruined millions of livelihoods and lives countrywide, is that India’s teachers community across the learning spectrum from KG-Ph D has become ready and willing, even if not entirely able, to embrace new digital technologies to teach the world’s largest child and youth population. Against this backdrop of a difficult and challenging year for India’s teachers, announcement of the CENTA® Teaching Professionals Olympiad (TPO) 2020 results on March 5, was enthusiastically welcomed by educators and school managements countrywide. Promoted and organised by the Bengaluru-based Centre for Teacher Accreditation (CENTA) Pvt. Ltd (estb.2014), a company that tests and certifies teacher competencies, the Centa TPO 2020 attracted entries from 25,000 teachers of 8,000 schools in India and 30 countries abroad, including the UAE. On March 5, 100 of Centa TPO’s 1,000 winners were felicitated online in a two-hour awards ceremony during which globally respected education leaders including Dr. James Tooley, vice chancellor, University of Buckingham (UK); Ashish Dhawan, chairman, Central Square Foundation, Delhi; Prof. Geeta Gandhi Kingdon, professor, University College, London; and Vikas Pota, founder, T4 Education, UK, announced TPO 2020 winners in 16 subjects. Moreover Summiya Yasmeen, co-founder and managing editor of EducationWorld, announced the Top 10 schools/organisations with the largest number of winners. Centa TPO 2020, which in effect awarded and celebrated the country’s best teachers, was supported by the Reliance Foundation, EducationWorld, Oxford University Press, University of Buckingham, Tech Mahindra, Central Square Foundation, T4 Education and Lenovo. “Centa was promoted seven years ago to transform teaching into an aspirational profession by testing and certifying teachers’ competencies to support their professional development and career progression. Simultaneously, Centa enables schools and organisations to distinguish themselves based on the quality of their teachers. One of our flagship initiatives is the annual Centa TPO — launched in 2015 — which rigorously tests teachers competencies in a competitive international Olympiad, available in 16 subjects. . Teachers who score beyond the minimum threshold — approximately 2,000 this year — are awarded…
CENTA TPO 2020: Growing enthusiasm for teacher development
EducationWorld April 2021 | Special Report