New Delhi: At a recent conference on 'Right to Education', organized by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), rights experts and educators advised state governments that they should not wait for any Central Government legislation to exercise the 'Right to Education' and assume the responsibility actively on their own.

"Taking English language education to the voiceless underprivileged is always a formidable task. English, being an essential carrier of knowledge in India promising prosperity, is a component in the government's draft policies of both 'Education for All' and 'Right to Education'", the experts and educators agreed.

Keeping this in perspective, the Distance Education Programme (DEP) of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), which is the nodal centre of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (and thus is jointly acronymed as DEP-SSA), has decided to hold workshops for Master Trainers, who are also called Resource Persons (RPs).

The RPs are generally veterans in their respective fields.

Currently on initiation of the Kerala Government, the DEP-SSA has planned six 10-day workshops for 180 RPs from Kerala in batches of 30 members each.

The orientation programme for the RPs began on Monday (30th September, 2008) here at the IGNOU campus.

The first of six scheduled workshops will begin from October 16, 2008 and end on February 18 next year. In this duration, there will be three workshops at Delhi and one each at Hyderabad, Bhubaneshwar and Bangalore centres.

The DEP-SSA training module has been designed on Communicative English for the RPs. The RPs have been assigned to tutor and train basic teachers and trainers in the remote target areas. The basic teachers and trainers actually teach and educate the underprivileged grassroots pupils.

According to Project Director Dr. S.S. Jena, it is a state-driven pilot project. Other states have also been offered this opportunity.

The Kerala-based RPs are long-timers in English Language Teaching and Learning (ELTL). The DEP-SSA module has strength to build up the RPs' capacity in Communicative English so that they can effectively transact English language to trainers and teachers at elementary levels in remote areas.

The module has been enriched from angles such as pronunciation, understanding and articulation in English language.

The workshop also aims at developing further modules so that the grassroots teachers can organize classroom activities in English language learning vis-à-vis those in other languages.

The workshop will concentrate on familiarizing the RPs, with certain basic postulates of the module so that they can successfully raise proficiency in English communication among trainers and teachers in targeted areas.

This module will be periodically updated with value addition, said Dr. Jena.

Initially, the training module will comprise eight units. The module will be transacted to the RPs in a 'blended approach' - that means blending the ODl and face-to-face interactives.

The eight units of the module for learning the basic skills are: 'Greeting and Introduction', 'Using Language at School', 'Interaction with Colleagues, Administration & Parents and Pronunciation', 'Asking Questions', 'Describing', 'Narrating', Use of Media in Communication' and 'Presentation'.

Lauding the RPs, IGNOU Pro-Vice Chancellor Professor Omprakash Mishra said, "Very senior teachers have come from Kerala to make our efforts, to reach the unreached, successful. It is a paradigm shift in education delivery. We are trying to respond to the increasing demand on us. It's a great challenge".

Asked how she would go about taking the challenge, a senior professor and a long-timer in ELTL movement, Dr. Geetha Nagaraj said, "The arduous task lies where you have to address remote area teachers. Generally, they are deprived of basic amenities of education like electricity and its tools such as books, stationery, learning scope etc. You have to motivate them and make them understand that learning English would actually boost their careers."

Dittoing, an IELTS and TOEFL teacher, G. Sudhakar said, "We generally try to develop the motivation aspects first before actually start teaching the teachers. In rural scenario, grassroots teachers are themselves underprivileged."