India News | Delhi Govt to Identify 'gifted' School Students, Hone Potential Through Special Programme
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. The Delhi government will conduct two intelligence tests to identify "gifted children", including the specially-abled, studying at its schools and hone their potential through a specialised curriculum, officials said on Wednesday.
New Delhi, Aug 28 (PTI) The Delhi government will conduct two intelligence tests to identify "gifted children", including the specially-abled, studying at its schools and hone their potential through a specialised curriculum, officials said on Wednesday.
Students will first undergo a Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT) and then an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test, they said. The CFIT will be conducted by schoolteachers and the IQ test by experts.
Following their selection under "Project Abhishikt", these students will be taught a specialised NCERT-based curriculum. The subjects would included English, Hindi, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Domestic Sciences, Social Studies, Computer Science, Physical Education, Sanskrit and Fine arts.
They will also be provided counselling, mental health services and exclusive classes to help them adapt to the specialised environment better, the officials said.
To train teachers in identifying "gifted children", the Delhi government has started a five-day training programme for them under the project -- an initiative of the Directorate of Education (DoE) and the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT).
The officials said 104 teachers are being trained at a government school in Kalkaji since Tuesday.
The project aims at exploring the untapped potential of students of Class 6 and Class 9 who are a cut above the rest, an official said.
"We anticipate that at least 200 students from 15 participating schools will be selected after the tests," the project's coordinator Stuti Gaur said.
Parents' consent would be sought to carry out these tests and move them to the dedicated facility once they are identified and selected as "gifted students", Gaur said.
The DoE and SCERT will also hold an orientation programme for parents , said the official.
"We do not know how parents will respond. To address this, we have developed a comprehensive training module for orientation of parents," Gaur said and added that the module is designed to reassure them of the benefits of this exclusive education project for their children.
"We will start the parent orientation sessions after identifying the specially-abled students," she added.
SCERT Joint Director Nahar Singh told PTI, "The primary goal of the project is to close the gap between the current abilities of these students and their immense potential. This will be achieved by providing specialised support and a well-developed curriculum to ensure their success."
Usually, teachers focus on students who are weak in studies, and this sometimes leads to the abilities of gifted students being overlooked, Singh added.
The first day of the training programme was on "Introduction and Understanding Giftedness". On August 27, teachers attended a session focused on the inception of the project.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)