Ranjitsinh Disale said that he will share 50% of the $ 1 million prize money equally among the top 10 finalists to support his work.
Ranjitsinh Disale jumped from his chair and let out a cry of joy when the winner of the 2020 Global Teacher Award was announced. Flanked by his parents on both sides, the Maharashtra primary school teacher hugged his mother as the thrill of winning the award. The award had not yet been assimilated. The proud parents called on other family members to join in the celebration at the virtual ceremony broadcast from the Natural History Museum in London. Ranjitsinh was among the top 10 finalists from around the world to win the $ 1 million prize (over Rs 7 crore) for promoting education among girls from tribal communities studying at Zilla Parishad Primary School in Solapur of Maharashtra, on the border with Karnataka. He has also translated textbooks for students whose primary language is Kannada.
Woohoo! Here’s THE MOMENT Stephen Fry announced Ranjitsinh Disale as the winner of the 2020 Global Teacher Prize! Congratulations Ranjit! Check it out here: https://t.co/9t5GXaIJ58 @ranjitdisale @stephenfry # GTP2020 #TeachersMatter #globalteacherprize #India @NHM_Londres @UNESCO pic.twitter.com/eQjSosGQwY
– Global Award for Teachers (@TeacherPrize) December 3, 2020
Interestingly, Disale announced that he will share half of the prize money with the nine finalists, making it the first time in the history of the Global Teacher Prize that the overall winner has shared the prize money with other finalists. With this, the other nine finalists are said to receive more than $ 55,000 each. “I am 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 that together we can change this world because sharing is growing, ”Ranjitsinh said in his speech.
The Global Teacher Prize 2020, an award in association with UNESCO, is an annual award founded by the Varkey Foundation in 2014, to recognize an exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession, as well as to highlight the important role of the teachers play in society.
The Zilla Parishad school was a dilapidated building when Ranjitsinh joined in 2009. The attendance of most girls from tribal communities was as low as 2% and teenage marriages were common. In addition to the problems of students whose primary language was Kannada, the Marathi textbooks left them unable to read or learn at all. Ranjitsinh decided to change their lives forever.
He learned Kannada and translated the textbook into the students’ native language. He also incorporated them with unique QR codes, allowing students to learn from audio poems, video lectures, stories, and assignments. To make learning more personalized, I would change the content and activities of the QR-coded textbooks by analyzing their reflections. To help girls with learning disabilities, he further enhanced QR-coded textbooks with the immersive reader and Flipgrid tools.
Following the success of this model across the state of Maharashtra, in 2018, Prakash Javadekar, the then Minister of Human Resource Development, announced that all NCERT textbooks would have built-in QR codes. Zilla Parishad was also awarded the best school in the district with 85% of students scoring A on annual exams.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed education and the communities it serves in many ways. But in this difficult time, teachers are doing everything they can to ensure that all students have access to their birthright to a good education, “Disale said in his winning speech.
The current CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, had recognized Ranjitsinh as one of the three stories of India in his 2017 book ‘Hit Refresh’.
Watch host and comedian Stephen Fry interacting with Ranjitsinh Disale:
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