Srinagar, July 19: Chief Secretary, Atal Dullu, today chaired a comprehensive review meeting of the School Education Department to take stock of the implementation of teaching landscape and other education reforms in the central region.
Apart from the Secretary of the Department of School Education, PD, Samagra Shikha attended the meeting; Director, School Education, Kashmir/Jammu; Secretary, JKBOSE and other related officers of the department.
The Chief Secretary insisted on improving the quality of education in government schools, highlighting the department’s adequate budget of about Rs 11,000 crore, which should be in line with the quality of education.
Dulloo underlined the important role of teachers, stating that “no one of the infrastructure or technological upgrades will give fruit unless the teachers play their own role in a efficient manner.” He further commented that there is no alternative to the dedication and creativity of teachers in teaching students.
The Chief Secretary emphasized the significant requirement of the timely ban of teachers spent in classes and timely monitoring of time. He called for the use of IT devices to identify teachers from schools for individual matters, tardens or unauthorized departure. He directed that the salary of the teacher should be linked to the presence of his school and legally leisure should be taken advantage of. He was informed that the JK Attendance app, a geo-coordinate-based face recognition attendance system, already implemented, in which 1.14 lakh employees actively mark their appearance.
The Chief Secretary asked to surprise senior officials of the department, especially in remote areas, schools, especially in remote areas, to assess the attendance and teaching effectiveness of the school, to conduct surprising visits.
Dulloo emphasized the importance of using modern infrastructure such as ICT Labs, Computer-Adead Learning (Cal) Labs, Smart Classroom, Atal Tinkering Labs and other available resources. He directed the department’s IT team to develop a dashboard for daily monitoring of IT infrastructure use in each school. Currently, 1420 Cal Center and 2036 ICT Labs and 4272 smart classrooms are completely operational in UT.
Regarding vocational education, the Chief Secretary regularly influenced the department for handholding and supported commercial learners until they secure placements in the job market. More than 141,000 students were currently nominated in 15 separate trades in schools in 9th to 12th classes.
Dulloo directed the department to take precautions and prepare perfectly before adopting the ecce model, which is emphasizing the wide basis for the merger of pre-primary education with childhood care in collaboration with the Social Welfare Department. He asked for the appointment of nodal officers for each region to ensure the feasibility of such merger and prevent difficulties for children seeking admission.
It was reported that pre-primary classes are to be started in 15,550 schools and 13,804 Aayas/assistants are engaged in schools with ecce classes.
The Chief Secretary reviewed the progress on various works under various schemes, including Kasturba Gandhi Girls Vidyalas (KGBV), Girls Hostels, Modern infrastructure and especially the establishment of PM Sri Yojana, which are in the central region’s nominated schools.
J&K, SED, SED, Ram Niwas Sharma, while throwing light on the overall academic landscape, revealed that 20 districts were distributed to 188 education areas (Jammu: 97, Kashmir: 91) for the management of the department affairs.
He also revealed that the literacy rate (UT, NSO Survey 2017) has been shown as 77.30% in the UT. He said that J&K has a total strength of schools of schools of 24,137 (18,724 Pvt. + Others) with a cumulative enrollment of 2,617,817 students (1356838 in Govt + 1260979 in 1356838 in 1356838) from the total secondary level.
The meeting was also made aware that the total budgetary allocation for the department for FY 2025-26 was Rs. 11,356.43 crore (including UT Capex and CSS) with overall approved budget allocation of rupees. 13,492.27 crores. It was added that a government school costs around 1 lakh/year spent on each enrolled student, which is much higher than the national average.
It was further divided that in J&K 396 schools were selected to be raised under the PM Shri program.
Regarding the Vidya Samiksha Center, it was reported that it was fully completed and operated in Jammu, which ensures data-managed decisions and improving educational results. Char Chat Bots (Smart Attendance J&K, J&K Study Buddy, Field Monitoring Bot, J & K Parent Pulse Bot) have been rolled out from there so far.