Jamshedpur, July 8: After charting a growth map for rural industry, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has turned its eyes towards training teachers to improve the quality of education.

The effort is being made to help the schools meet the vision set by them to achieve the standards of the Malcolm Boleridge model of education.

The two-day workshop, ?Excellence in Education Programme?, for the city schools organised by CII-IQ (Institution of Quality), Bangalore, began today at the auditorium of the Shavak Nanavati Technical Institute (SNTI).

The workshop is being attended by over 150 principals and teachers representing the city schools.

The workshop revolves around the need to create learning schools where students would not just be literate but educated and learned.

?It is important that the teachers are able to assess and set goals for themselves to improve the quality of students,? said Chitra Uthaya, counsellor-Total Quality Management (TQM), CII-IQ (Bangalore).

Roped in by Tata Steel, the counsellors are conducting the workshop to help teachers and principals attain excellence in education.

The workshop embarked upon five disciplines of learning, which include personal mastery, shared vision, team learning, systems thinking and mental models.

While personal mastery laid stress on the need of teachers to make themselves more disciplined towards setting goals and attaining them, a session on shared vision and team learning was conducted to help teachers and students work as partners to realise their goals.

The mental models and the need to shed the pre-conceived ideas about students was highlighted at the workshop.

?Almost everywhere teachers and principals categorise students as good and bad immediately. So a student, despite his efforts to perform well, is unable to break the mental mould of a teacher. We are trying to tell teachers to avoid building mental models of students and completely do away with the ladder of inference in order to help children evolve and grow as complete individuals,? said Senthil Kumar, counsellor, TQM, CII-IQ.

The counsellors will conduct portfolio building for teachers to help teachers evaluate themselves.

?Under portfolio-making, teachers could be asked by schools to draw up a complete list of their achievements in class throughout the year. This would help the teachers to analyse and set higher standards for themselves every year,? Kumar explained.

However, Kumar added that CII is just paving the way for schools to upgrade the quality of education in the steel city.

?By suggesting an assessment for the teachers we are not asking them to grade themselves only. We would like them to strive towards improving their skills to help create learning schools,? Kumar said.