The National Productivity and Competitiveness Council (NPCC) in collaboration with the ministry of Education and Human resources is organising the third edition of InnovEd (Innovation for the education sector) after the success of the two previous ones. Its overall objective is to promote innovation and creativity among students. Furthermore, it is believed that innovation is the key to sustained economic growth. It can be technological, organizational, marketing, production or processing and applies to all sectors: manufacturing, services, agriculture and education. The first edition saw the enrolment of 92 schools, which increased to 153 the following year. 5177 pupils took part in it and there were around 550 innovations.

The first phase of InnovEd is nearing its end and, so far, things seem to be going according to plan. Indeed, phase 1 of the project consisted in training stakeholders of the education sector such as teachers, administrators or school inspectors to equip participants with the knowledge and techniques to guide and assist students throughout the 2007 edition. To that effect, the NPCC is working closely with the Connecticut Invention Convention (CIC), which has sent two of its trainers, Karen Brennan and Honora Kenney. CIC is a non-profit educational organization based in the USA. For the last 24 years, its main goal has been to promote critical and creative thinking.

InnovEd was launched two years ago for students of pre-primary, primary and secondary schools (including pre-vocational ones) both private and state. Regarding this issue, Hemlata Ramsohok, productivity executive at the NPCC and coordinator of Innoved says: “It is one of the rare projects that gets across the curriculum as it appeals to all segments of the education sector.”

InnovEd has various objectives such as arousing the curiosity of students, developing self-learning abilities and developing a culture of continuous improvement. More importantly, it helps students develop their creativity and creative thinking. The project is divided into four phases.

The first phase was to train the stakeholders (mainly teachers) to make them become teachers. This phase will end on Tuesday with a general sensitization session for all heads of schools invloved in the project. The second phase will consist in training those stakeholders and the facilitators. The training will occur on 21st and 22nd March. For the registration of those who want to become facilitators, the deadline is the 9th March. The third phase will be an exhibition done by schools. In other words, after their training, the facilitators will get back to their schools to implement the project. Thereby, participating schools will have to put on a school exhibition to exhibit the innovations students have come forward with. A jury constituted at school level will have to sort out the best innovations which will be sent for selection at zone level. The fourth phase will result from exhibition at zone level. Finally the last phase will be an exhibition at the national level in June. An award ceremony will take place following the exhibition. Hemlata Ramsohok is confident the project will be successful. She says: “If all of us (stakeholders of the education sector) work together, we can make it happen!”