Over 5000 Primary Schools have less than 30 enrollment
VIKAS SHARMA
JAMMU, AUG 24: Despite concerted efforts by the Education Department to increase the enrollment of students in the government schools across the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, situation continues to be grim. The sorry state of affairs can be gauged from the fact that out of the total 18785 government schools in the UT, as many as 65 schools including 62 Primary and 3 Upper Primary have zero enrolment.
The crisis deepens further with 5073 primary schools have less than 30 enrolment and 1597 schools have less than l5 enrolment. In addition, the number of schools with adverse Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) at the Primary level is meager 16 percent.
These figures came to light during the Project Approval Board meeting for considering the Annual Work Plan and Budget (AWP&B) FY 2025-26 Samagra Shiksha for the UT of Jammu & Kashmir. The meeting was held on March 15, 2025 at New Delhi under the chairmanship of Sanjay Kumar, Secretary, School Education and Literacy (SE&L), Ministry of Education.
J&K UT was requested to look at the number of schools with adverse PTR and the reasons of low enrolment and be identified and address on priority including the rationalisation of teachers.
It was also disclosed in the crucial meeting that J&K UT has has 77.32 percent government schools out of the total number of schools. Only 54.06 percent of students are enrolled in these government-run schools. It was highlighted that enrolment in private schools is higher in comparison to government schools. Further, the UT was advised to prioritise the improvement of the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) and Net Enrolment Ratio (NER) at the Higher Secondary level in the coming years.
In terms of infrastructure, J&K UT cut a sorry figure as out of the total 18785 government schools, only 3304 (17.6 percent) schools have solar panel installed. Further, there are very few Secondary/Senior Secondary schools without lCT/Computer Lab, Smart Classrooms an Subject specific labs. Education Ministry suggested that that these gaps can be saturated this year only.
Accordingly, UT was also advised to identify the gaps through UDISE+ and propose these schools in the current year AWP&B for the consideration by the board.
Union Budget, 2018-19 has announced that school education would be treated holistically and without segmentation from pre-primary to class XII. It is, in this context, that the Department launched the Integrated Scheme for School Education, Samagra Shiksha in 2018 by subsuming the erstwhile Centrally Sponsored Schemes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) and Teacher Education (TE).
The scheme treats school education as a continuum and is in accordance with Sustainable Development Goal for Education (SDG-4). The scheme not only provides support for the implementation of the RTE Act but has also been aligned with the recommendations of NEP 2020 to ensure that all children have access to quality education with an equitable and inclusive classroom environment which should take care of their diverse background, multilingual needs, different academic abilities and make them active participants in the learning process.
Great.!