UNESCO, RIE NCERT Bhubaneswar Sign MoU To Promote Teacher Health

• UNESCO and RIE Bhubaneswar signed an MoU to integrate health and well-being into pre-service teacher education programs in India.
• The partnership will develop curriculum, train future teachers in empathy, resilience, and life skills, and produce a handbook to guide teacher educators.
• The initiative aligns with NEP 2020, NCFSE 2023, and SDGs 3, 4, and 5, aiming to create safe, inclusive, and health-promoting classrooms nationwide.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Regional Office for South Asia and the Regional Institute of Education (RIE), Bhubaneswar, under the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), Ministry of Education, today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to integrate health and well-being in pre-service teacher education system.

The partnership draws on UNESCO's earlier collaboration with the Government of India under the School Health and Wellness Programme (SHWP), a flagship program of the Ministries of Education and Health under Ayushman Bharat. As a member of the National Resource Group, UNESCO contributes technical advice to enhance and scale up the programme. It leverages international frameworks on sexuality education, health-promoting schools, and promotion of safe and inclusive school environments. Since 2020, UNESCO has been working energetically to implement School Health and Wellness Programme in 30,000 CBSE-affiliated schools. Together with CBSE and NCERT, UNESCO has trained more than 960 Principals and 40,000 teachers through Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programmes and impacted over 3 million learners.

The two-year partnership consolidates ongoing endeavors to mainstream health and well-being into Integrated B.Sc.-B.Ed., B.A.-B.Ed., and B.Ed. courses through RIE Bhubaneswar. Enlarging this endeavor to pre-service teacher training, the UNESCO-RIE Bhubaneswar partnership seeks to prepare future teachers with the empathy, resilience, and competencies required to build safe, inclusive, and health-promoting classrooms through the following major aims:

1. Curriculum Development: To develop and integrate curricular content on health and well-being into pre-service teacher education programmes.
2. Teacher Preparation: To jointly implement projects that equip future educators with empathy, resilience, and critical life skills, enabling them to create safe, inclusive, and supportive learning spaces that enhance both education and well-being.

The partnership directly contributes to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 3 (Good Health and Well-being), 4 (Quality Education), and 5 (Gender Equality). Under the partnership, UNESCO will facilitate the production of a Handbook for teacher educators on Health and Well-being that will also serve as a guidebook for future teachers. RIE Bhubaneswar will take up the task of incorporating health and well-being into current teacher education programs beginning with few teacher education institutions.

Prof. P C Agarwal, Joint Director, NCERT complimented  UNESCO's work through the School Health and Wellness Programme in the nation. "The four-year Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP) has the vision of developing well-prepared teachers who could plan and implement developmentally appropriate learning experiences for students across various stages of school education. The ITEP aims at providing the future teachers with the best quality education in content, pedagogy, values, and practice. Health and well-being are of prime significance in curricular aspects of ITEP. This MoU represents a milestone in our collective vision towards mainstreaming health and well-being as part of education, and we have every confidence in this partnership", Prof.Agarwal stated.

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At this point, our partnership has so far been National in focus and we are looking forward to working with RIE Bhubaneswar to take concrete action at the State level. Today's collaboration with RIE Bhubaneswar equips future teachers in Odisha not only to impart academic content, but to produce resilient, empathetic, and well-balanced learners. "We plan to take our work to other states in the near future", stated Tim Curtis, Director and Representative, UNESCO Regional Office for South Asia

This MoU marks the inaugural one for RIE Bhubaneswar, and we are strongly committed to taking this programme forward on health and wellbeing. We eagerly look forward to the support and collaboration of UNESCO towards enhancing and reforming pre-service teacher education towards this larger vision of holistic education", informed Prof. Manasi Goswami, Principal, RIE NCERT, Bhubaneswar.

This program complements the vision of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE) 2023 that list life skills, health, and well-being as a core component of quality education. It also supports NITI Aayog's efforts in augmenting and mainstreaming school health and wellness programs under Ayushman Bharat, with specific emphasis on mental health and well-being.

In the future, the collaboration will provide training workshops to teacher educators so that they can pilot and implement health and well-being content as part of pre-service teacher education programs. Upon successful roll-out, UNESCO will involve the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) to lobby for the country-wide inclusion of health and well-being in teacher education curricula so that this effort supports systemic and sustainable change.

At the time of signing of the MoU, Prof.H.K.Senapaty, Chairperson MoU Committee of RIE,Bhubaneswar, Joyce Poan,Programme Specialist and Chief of Education, UNESCO, South Asia, New Delhi, Prof.Saroj Bala Yadav, Former Dean (Academic),NCERT, Ms Sarita Jadav, National Programme Officer, UNESCO, New Delhi, Prof.Laxmidhar Behera, Convenor MoU Committee, RIE Bhubaneswar  and the officials of UNESCO were present.