Microsoft India plans to train to 1 lakh teachers every year

Microsoft India is planning to train up to 1 lakh te achers every year under its primary teacher training programme – Shiksha. Till da te, it has trained more than 3.7 lakh government scho olteachers, about 11,000 pr incipals and 19 million students across the country.

Karan Bajwa, general manager, public sector – Microsoft India, said, “When we launched this initiative, we had set a target to train 80,000 teachers over a span of four years. But we have exceeded that target by over four times. Our revised aim is to train 80,000-1 lakh teachers every year.”

According to Bajwa, the education scenario in India faces numerous challenges such as the huge number of student base, lack of quality teachers as well as the problem of replicability, which results is varied modes of education across schools and colleges.

In addition to its primary level training, Microsoft has also come up with progra mmes aimed at training te achers and students in the secondary as well as higher education levels. One of th em is DreamSpark, which aims to provide students wi th access to the latest Microsoft developer and desi gner tools free of cost.

Also, as a direct inves tment to improve the empl oyability quotient of stud e nts, Microsoft India has tr a ined about 10,000 faculty members to teach advanced industry technologies, indirectly reaching more than 80 per cent of all engineering students.

Bajwa said the MS platform was the most preferred by educationists and students in schools compared with open source platforms since it helps in a saving of at least 17 per cent due to its low maintenance and low upgrade cost as well as easy availability.