Sochi-like centre for talented children in works

A year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Sirius Centre for Gifted Education in Sochi on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invite, a similar project is set to get underway in India — at the PM’s suggestion.

ET has gathered that the Modi government is preparing to set up a Centre of Excellence for gifted children in India and will launch a pilot project on it in October- as part of its 100-day governance agenda.

To start with, 60 school-going children from classes nine to 12 will be selected for an intensive mentorship and training programme that is proposed to be held at IIT-Delhi and the National Bal Bhawan.


The 15-day residential programme scheme—yet to be officially named—will be fully government funded and involve identification of the skillsets of the chosen students and ways to channelise those.

The union human resource development (HRD) ministry and the Prime Minister's Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) are coordinating the programme. Scientific Advisor to PM Dr K Vijay Raghavan has already chaired two meeting on the plan.

As part of the pilot project, 30 children will be selected for the liberal arts module and another 30 for the science and engineering module.

The HRD ministry is considering starting off with selecting top-scoring students across Olympiads, contests and competitions organised by governmental and autonomous bodies. While two meetings have already been held on the India’s gifted children scheme, the final modalities are still under discussion.

The PM-STIAC is working on the larger plan modelled on the Sochi centre — Identification of gifted children — especially in Maths and Science in the age group 3-15 years as well. It plans to conduct field studies in various parts of the country to identify gifted children and devise comprehensive mentoring mechanisms for them. The National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS, IISc Campus, Bengaluru) University of Delhi and the Agastya Foundation in Bengaluru are to collaborate for the project.