Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Two Samvida Shikshaks (contractual teachers) posted in government primary and middle schools in remote rural areas of Madhya Pradesh have been selected for the prestigious National Teachers’ Awards 2025.
President Droupadi Murmu will confer the awards on Sheela Patel (Damoh) and Bherulal Osara (Agar-Malwa) at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Teacher’s Day (September 5).
They are the first teachers from their villages and second from their districts to have been selected for the award for devising innovative ways to teach children. Both have been selected for the award in their first attempt.
Going beyond their call of duty, both use innovative approaches to bring children from poor families of marginalised communities to school, teach them in a language and in a way that is easy for them to understand, and even spend money from their own pocket on them.
‘For some I am didi, for others I am beti or bua,’
Sangeeta Patel |
Gud after midday meals
42-year-old Sangeeta Patel has been working as a Samvida Shiksha since 2008 at Government Primary School Devran, Taparia Tola in the Patharia Block of Damoh district. Most of the children were irregular in attending the school. She bought a scooty and began fetching irregular attendees from their homes.
She also wrote songs and poems in Bundelkhandi to teach basics like names of week days, months, fruits, vegetables. She developed ‘Learning Places’ at such points in the village where children used to play. Due to her efforts, the enrolment in her school has gone up from 19 to 70 and cent per cent of the children pass their Class 5 exam.
“I got tremendous support from the community. No one in the village addresses me as a teacher. For some, I am didi, for others I am beti or bua,” she says.
91 students clear exam in first division
Bherulal Osara |
Bherulal Osara, an M.Sc. in Mathematics, is a Samvida Shikshak at Government Middle School, Kheriya Susner in Agar-Malwa district. He is the headmaster in-charge of the school and has been teaching there for the past 11 years. Two years back, he started an innovation which he calls “Srijan Prashnouttar”. Under it, he asked children from Classes 5-8 to think of questions based on their lessons and then answer them.
“This encouraged the children to study the text deeply,” he says. The questions and answers developed by the children were also sent to their parents so that they could ask them to their sons and daughters. The teachers also did the same.
The result was that all the 91 students of his school cleared their examination in first division and the number of enrollments has gone up to 171. “There were two primary schools in the village. Both are now closed,” he says.
