To dear teachers, with love

Ajay Joshi
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, September 5

As many as five teachers from the district were awarded with the State Teacher Award 2020 on the occasion of Teacher’s Day. The awardees including three head teachers at primary schools, one principal and one lecturer were awarded on the basis of the development of their schools and overall performance of students.

This year, total 54 teachers from across the state were adjudged as the recipients of State Teacher Award, 10 for Young State Teacher Award 2020 and Administrator Award each. None from the district managed to bag the award in the young state teacher and administrator categories.

The awardees from Jalandhar includes Amandeep Kaundal, physical education lecturer at Government Senior Secondary School (GSSS), Poonian; Neelam Bala, head teacher, Government Primary School, Bahmanian block Shahkot-1; Boota Ram, head teacher, GPS Rurka Kalan Girls; Amandeep Kaur, ETT, GPS Sindhar and principal Dalbir Kaur, GSSS Randhawa Masanda.

Any teacher or school head working in the education department having regular service of at least 10 years were eligible for the state teacher award.

District education officer Harinder Pal Singh said, a state-level committee was formed for nomination and selection of teachers for the awards, which were given purely on merit based after evaluating different parameters of performance. The maximum weightage (30 per cent) was given to contribution in enhancing learning outcomes of students at school/blocks/district level, followed by professional development (10 per cent), innovative experiments for making learning process easy (10 per cent) and other prominent contribution for the school during the academic session, summer break remedial classes and others (10) per cent.

Boota Ram said, he’s been teaching for the past 32 years and has been working as the head teacher for the last 10 years. “In the last academic year, our school was converted into a smart school from the Rs25 lakh donation. Ours is the only school in the Doaba region that received national-level certificate for scouting, development of computer lab, 77 per cent increase in the enrolment and students winning state-level medal in karate championship,” said Boota Ram, who runs his school, having a strength of 207 students, along with one more teacher.

Similarly, Amandeep Kaundal, said he was selected for the award due to his contribution in multiple tasks. Over 100 students trained by him were state position holders, 10 were national merit holders and several others were district position holders. He said, his school was among the very few schools in rural areas having NCC at both junior and senior levels. Apart from the development of the school during his tenure as the officiating principal, he also developed the sports department at the school by spending Rs1 lakh from his own pocket.

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