Exiled Tibetan premier presides over primary teachers training eorkshop in Dharamsala

Tibetan Prime Minister in-exile, Lobsang Sangay, presided over the concluding session of a three-day training workshop for primary teachers to boost early grade reading in Tibetan primary schools here.

The workshop, 'Early Grade Reading Workshop for Primary Teachers', was organised by the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) of the education department in-exile.

It was held as part of a series of workshops and trainings organised as per the recommendations of the Education Advisory Committee Meeting held in June last year.

Addressing over fifty participants here, Sangay said he would continue to devote most of his time as Sikyong (Prime Minister) to enhance the education system.

He added that education is a must for each and every Tibetan in-exile and urged the teachers to make every effort to build on the capability of every Tibetan by fully exploiting their available resources.

Primary school teacher of Tibetan Children Village (TCV) School, Tenzin Palzom, who attended the workshop, said it was very beneficial and the administration should organise more such workshops for early grade teachers.

"I think it's very, very useful for us. For example, normally we have workshops for middle schools and senior schools. I think we should have more workshops for early grade reading because they are the most important in anybody's education," said Palzom.

There are six million Tibetans in Tibet, and another 150,000 around the world.

China has ruled Tibet since 1950, when Communist troops marched in and announced its "peaceful liberation". Thousands of its people, including spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, fled into exile in India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule a few years later.

More than 100 Tibetans have set themselves alight in protest against Chinese rule since 2009, mostly in heavily Tibetan areas of Sichuan, Gansu and Qhingui provinces rather than in what China terms the Tibet Autonomous Region. A majority of these victims succumbed to burns.

Tibetan Buddhist monasteries are often under surveillance and subject to raids by Chinese security forces.

China has defended its iron-fisted rule in Tibet, saying the remote region suffered from dire poverty, serfdom, brutal exploitation and economic stagnation until 1950, when the Red Army peacefully liberated it.