About:
- The award is given as public recognition to meritorious teachers working in primary, middle and secondary schools.
- The award carries a Silver Medal, Certificate and Rs. 50,000/- as award money.
Revised guidelines:
This year, the Ministry of Human Resource Development has revised the guidelines for the selection of Teachers for National Awards (2017). The features of the new guidelines are:
- All regular teachers will be eligible to apply and no minimum years of service is required (Earlier, only teachers with minimum 15 years of service were eligible).
- All teachers could directly apply and nominate themselves for the award (this feature did not exist in the earlier scheme).
- Self-nominations from teachers were invited online on mhrd.gov.in (it is for the first time that online applications have been invited for these awards).
- The number of awards has been rationalized to 45 (Earlier, the number of awardees had crossed 300).
- The final selection was done by an independent Jury. The criteria adopted was to select those teachers who had shown innovation in their work and had added value to their school and students.
