Kerala teachers to get opportunity to teach in Brazil

Thiruvananthapuram, March 24 (IANS) Around 500 teachers from Kerala might get an opportunity to teach in Brazilian schools in the near future, say officials.

The teachers, who need not necessarily know the Portuguese language, would teach Maths and English from Class 1 to 6 using the education inventory tools developed by state owned IT@School - that is taught here in all state run education institutions.

M. Sivasankar, secretary, General Education Department of the state and K. Anvar Sadath, executive director, IT@School Project told IANS from Brazil that their visit there has been a success in exploring the possibilities of instituting a programme of academic collaboration between Brazil and Kerala.

According to Sivasankar, officials from the Pernambuco state in Brazil said attempts would be made to sign a bilateral agreement on academic collaboration between Brazil and India, during the visit of President Dilma Rousseff March 29 at the 4th BRICS summit in New Delhi.

BRICS is the international political platform of leading emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which together comprise half of the world's total population.

'There are around 40 schools with roughly 4,000 children in total for standards 1 to 6. They wanted one Indian teacher for every 40 children to be deployed in these schools for a period of three years. UNESCO will be the nodal agency to coordinate the project in association with Federal University and Ministry of Education,' said Sadath.

'We suggested that they look at Kerala exclusively as we have surplus teachers and managing 100 diverse teachers from different states of India will be difficult. This suggestion has been accepted and mayor of Timbauba has identified a building for the centre. The teachers will be provided accommodation and food by the local government,' added Sadath.

Through this largest ever academic collaboration between Brazil and India, selected teachers from Kerala would teach Mathematics and English through Information Technology at 40 schools in the Pernambuco state.

Mauricio Rands, secretary of Pernambuco state and a member of Brazil's parliament informed the Kerala team that efforts would be made to sign the bilateral agreement on March 30 during the meeting between Brazil Minister for Education Prof. Aloizio Mercadante and Kapil Sibal, Indian minister of human resource development.

'Steps have been initiated at the diplomatic level to obtain sanction from the Government of Kerala as well with respect to the draft agreement. It is also proposed to ensure the presence of Kerala chief minister and minister for education during the event,' said Sadath.

During the four-day visit to Brazil, the officials held meetings with Brazilian Education Minister Aloizio Mercadante, UNESCO Director in Brazil Lucian Moonos, and Indian Ambassador in Bazil B.S. Prakash.