The Gujarat Education Innovations Commission Bill 2009 stands “to promote conception, experimentation and implementation of educational innovations in the State of Gujarat and for that purpose, to establish the Gujarat Educational Innovations Commission”.

Aptly, a pioneer effort was initiated by the Gujarat Educational Innovation Commission (GEIC); the Gujarat State Council for Educational Research & Training (G.C.E.R.T.); and Ravi J. Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (RJMCEI-IIMA) in January 2013.

The path-breaking initiative was aimed to facilitate, inculcate and nurture a culture of creativity and innovation in formal education. Since the year 2014, these efforts got strengthened through a variety of partnerships that GCERT entered into, towards encouraging and facilitating innovative work in the education sector. IIM Ahmedabad; Sri Aurobindo Society; The ESSAR Foundation; Nayara Energy Limited; have partnered pioneer efforts of GCERT towards making creativity and innovation in education a reality in government schools of Gujarat.

Consolidating the above path-breaking initiatives and taking learnings from the pilot work, GCERT moved on towards establishing a systemic framework in this direction. In the year 2018, GCERT, in partnership with the Nayara Energy Limited, established the Navtar Centre for Innovations in Education. This ambitious programme, initiated by GCERT and Nayara Energy Limited was formally launched at the 6th Vibrant Gujarat Summit

ITOWE Development Foundation is the technical partner for Navtar.

Even the best of the education system faces problems. Problems may be varied and very different, but solutions to most problems has its roots in ‘thinking different; thinking out-of-the-box’. Thus creative innovations are at the roots of solutions that can help not only improve the quality of teaching-learning but can also make the education system more effective and efficient. Thus, it is usually a PROBLEM that precedes an INNOVATION! Action Research is thus at the heart of any innovation. An agency that is keen for innovations to happen, must encourage, facilitate and support action research by various practitioners under it. Innovations in education is not about use of technology only. It is also about the processes, products, services, policies, programmes and partnerships. To be innovative, an educational intervention must:

• Enhance the quality of learning
• Provide plausible solution to a prevailing problem
• Be of a scale so as to match that of the problem it promises to solve

For example GCERTs ‘School on wheels’ in the salt-pan areas of the Rann, is a beautiful example of policy/systems level innovation in education.