Ranjitsinh Disale, a 32-year-old teacher from Paritewadi village, Solapur, Maharashtra, India has been named the winner of Global Teacher Prize 2020, in partnership with UNESCO.
Ranjitsinh Disale, who transformed the life chances of young girls at Government Primary School run by Zilla Parishad, Paritewadi, Solapur, Maharashtra, India.
Ranjitsinh Disale made history by bagging the coveted Global Teacher Award. The award that comes with prize money is Rs.7 crore or USD 1 Million.
There were 12,000 nominations from 140 countries around the world for this award. His work towards girl child education and innovative use of technology took him to this height.
Ranjitsinh Disale's work
He started teaching at the school in 2009. The school was completely sandwiched between a cattle shed and a storeroom. In the school, most of the girls were from tribal communities and attendance was just 2% and teenage marriage was common in the village.
The school's primary language was Kannada, but the curriculum was in Marathi. Mr. Ranjitsinh Disale learned the Kannada language and translated the books from Marathi to Kannada. He just not only learned the Kannada language and translated the books from Marathi but also embedded the books with unique QR codes. The use of QR code technology helped the students to get access to audio poems, videos, stories, assignments, etc.
Read more about Ranjit's work here.
Watch this video to know more about Ranjit's work.
Impact of Ranjitsinh's interventions
Ranjitsinh's interventions have been extraordinary! there are now no teenage marriages in the village and no dropouts. The attendance is 100% at the school!
Ranjit's school was the first in the state of Maharashtra to use QR-coded textbooks. Later, by seeing the success of using QR-coded textbooks created by Ranjit, in 2018 the HRD Ministry of India asked the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) to introduce embedded QR codes in the textbooks.
Now, because of Ranjitsinh Disale's innovative idea of using QR code technology in the teaching and learning process, all the textbooks are embedded with QR codes, and this has been very useful to the learners and teachers at the school in India.
What Ranjit says..
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed education and the communities it serves in a multitude of ways. But in this hard time, teachers are giving their best to make sure every student has access to their birthright of a good education.
Teachers are the real change-makers who are changing the lives of their students with a mixture of chalk and challenges. They always believe in giving and sharing.
And therefore, I am very pleased to announce that I will share 50% of the prize money equally among my fellow Top 10 finalists to support their incredible work. I believe, together, we can change this world because sharing is growing.