On Tuesday, before an audience of hundreds at the opening ceremony of the 19th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers, it was announced that Design for Change (DFC), an initiative formulated by the Riverside Education Foundation in India, received the top 2015 Commonwealth Education Good Practice Award.
Design for Change begins with the simple and powerful premise, ‘I Can’ – children can. It is an idea that empowers children to identify challenges and use a Design Thinking Formula to bring change.
In the process, children build 21st century skills of empathy, collaboration and critical thinking. The programme began as a school challenge in 2009, at an Ahmedabad school in India.
The Commonwealth Education Good Practice Awards is a competition among Commonwealth ministries of education, civil society organizations (CSOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in the field of education.
The awards recognize and promote good practice in education programmes, projects, policies, strategies or significant interventions that have made a positive difference to the status and conditions of school children, teachers or the education system in their countries.
Criteria for the awards include relevance, measurable impact and effect, sustainability, efficiency and effectiveness, community participation and replication.
The 89 entries received from 20 countries across the Commonwealth represented a diverse and well-rounded group.
The second prize was awarded to the ICT Innovation in School Education in South Africa for its project, Taking Quality Education to where it Matters through Webcasting.
The Ministry of Education of Singapore won the third prize for its Primary Education Review and Implementation Holistic Assessment Project (PERI-HA).
A special award was given to the finalist with the strongest teacher professional development component in honour of the late Steve Sinnot, former general secretary of the United Kingdom National Union of Teachers.
The Rwanda Education Board, Ministry of Education captured this award for its Supporting Teachers’ English through Mentoring (STEM) initiative.
