Over 30 academics, teachers and teacher-educators from India will convene at the workshop, to be joined by two delegates from each of the seven other South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries.

A Reader in the curriculum department of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), Amarendra Behera, who is also coordinating the four-day workshop, said: “Academics will be able to learn from each other’s experiences. Our teacher-training methods have already been employed in Afghanistan (the NCERT held a 42-day workshop for Afghanistan teacher educators last year), now there’s a chance for a wider SAARC dialogue.”

Something Behera thinks could be learned, for instance, from Nepal is its approach to teaching children good reading habits. “We admire the way Nepal has established libraries at the village level. It’s something we could also do to popularise reading,” said Behera.

In India, the success of states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu in achieving near universal primary, and now also secondary, education will be used as a case study to be replicated. Behera not only put this success down to increased overall literacy in these two states but also to “strong awareness about the importance of education”, which he thinks could be inculcated elsewhere.

Topics the workshop will address include learning materials and textbooks in schools, and also flexible approaches to the school timetable, calendar and environment. For instance, examinations are conducted at the same time across India for students sitting the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) examinations. Behera said: “In Arunachal Pradesh, it’s very cold during exam time in March — students can barely hold their pens. We need more flexibility to take such things into account.”