Convoke is a National research Symposium which aims at addressing challenges in imparting education and strengthening its quality with special focus on all teachers, educationists, heads of schools across India. This initiative is a partnership between NITI Aayog and Bharti Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Bharti Enterprises.
Through this platform, School Teachers/ Heads/Principals of Government Schools and teachers from Bharti Foundation network will be encouraged to use research-based solutions through scientific approach, and showcase their efforts taken at the grass-root level in improving learning outcomes. Teachers over the years have been coming up with innovative solution to help support students and even more during lockdown. Through Convoke they can now share their micro research papers. These research papers will be analyzed by a panel of Educationists. The shortlisted Research Papers will be presented during ‘National Research Symposium’ scheduled in January,2022.
Dr Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, said, “There is a need to focus on quality as we have achieved near universal access in elementary education. It becomes an immediate and foremost important task given the learning regression that has happened due to the Covid 19 school closures. I hope that CONVOKE will become a platform which will be pan-India and it will become a movement towards improving learning outcomes through joyful teaching and learning. I appeal to all the education stakeholders to make quality education a mission to meet the aspirations of our youth. We must also focus on pre-school education as a significant number of children are not attending pre-school and therefore lagging behind in learning outcomes when they enter schools.”
During the lauch event Amitabh Kant, Chief Executive Officer, NITI Aayog emphasized that “CONVOKE will immensely help in bridging the gap between academia, policy makers and practitioners in the education field. The findings from ground by the teachers on ‘what works’ will help policy makers to design policies which are responsive to the needs of the grassroots
Mamta Saikia, Chief Executive Officer, Bharti Foundation, spoke about how CONVOKE has evolved from being a small-scale discussion forum to promote teacher interaction to now becoming a unique platform of a National stature that will promote micro researches from teachers that will further plough into the policymaking in the country.
The applications for CONVOKE are open now and applications will be accepted towards the end of January. Further details about the event can be accessed at https://bhartifoundation.org/convoke/