Nishikant Khajuria
Two years back, expectations were high with the change of guard in the School Education Department, which had been otherwise left virtually ruined by a mafia operating in the corridors of power and calling shots after taking over de-facto control on the officers holding responsible positions.
Then standard of education could be gauged from the fact that as per National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2014, Jammu and Kashmir State remained at 32nd position out of the total 34 States and the Union Territories by scoring 56 percent in language assessment while in Mathematics, the State figured at 30th position by scoring 61percent. In the NAS 2015 for class X, 73 percent J&K children had scored in English test less than 50 percent while in Mathematics, 87 percent children scored below 50 percent and in Science, 85 percent students obtained less than 50 percent scores.
Further, `Lakhoun Mein Ek’ survey (2015) by PRATHAM, in J&K, indicated that 22 percent of the children in class 8th, cannot read Standard 2 English test and 20 percent of class 8th children can’t solve Grade 2 Maths problems.
In such a depressing scenario, all eyes were set on the new team assuming office in the School Education Department and the series of fresh announcements for streamlining the system besides introducing innovative reforms for upgrade standard of school education in the State.
However, contrary to the tall claims of School Education Department of reforming system for overall benefit of the students, its several controversial decisions like introducing Kindergarten in Government Higher Secondary Schools, formation of Clusters of schools, restructuring examinations and revision of No Detention Policy seem to have proved more chaotic than reformative. The so called reforms were done in such a hotch- potch manner that even those executing the orders were not able to explain benefit of the same.
Introducing Kindergarten in Higher Secondary Schools was such a crazy idea that a number of school Principals refused to implement the same notwithstanding threatening directions to them to bow before the official diktat.
Pertinent to mention that even when a high school is upgraded as higher secondary school, its Middle wing is separated with a head since teaching environment is different in higher secondary classes from elementary classes.
How much this crazy idea helped the KG kids and higher secondary schools can be gauged from the status of most prestigious SRML Higher Secondary School Jammu, where three class rooms were vacated for accommodating pre-nursery children thus forcing the regular students to take classes in examination halls.
Several other schools closed these KG classes on account of different reasons, such as non-availability of female caretaker, transport facility, required infrastructure and pre-nursery kids too.
Another evolution of these reforms is the Clusters, which have been formed to monitor the schools, under such a unit. An institution, either a higher secondary school or a high school, is designated as Cluster under which all the adjoining schools fall. These Cluster institutions monitor functioning of schools under it and take care of
the responsibilities such as maintaining all records, conduct registration, exams, liaisoning with the concerned CEO, ZEO, DIET etc and do other administrative jobs concerning these schools.
However, the formation of Clusters not only rendered the ZEO offices virtually defunct
but also badly affected class work and teaching in the schools designated as such. Overburdened because of new responsibilities and administrative nature of job, these Cluster schools seem to have become victim of the policy makers’ follies.
Similarly, the decision of restructuring examinations and allowing provisional admission in class 11th to all students who appear in class 10th exams, has triggered a chaos like situation, which is severely affecting studies in the schools.
Besides suddenly increasing the number of fresh admissions more than 100 percent in class 11th, the allotment of streams to the newly admitted students without ascertaining their academic performance turned into a major headache for the schools.
The School Education Department had restructured the examination system to increase class work days and save academic year of students. However, the apparent result of the new system is not encouraging but chaotic. Even after more than one and half month since the conclusion of class 10th examinations, overburdened admission process for the class 11th was still going on in a number of schools.
The system has not only overstrained the admission process but the classes of 11th standard are also overburdened where the strength of students is more than double and this is adversely affecting normal studies in view of space constraint thus ultimately further degrading standard of education in the Government run schools in Jammu and Kashmir.
Further, the School Education Department in March last had decided to implement its previous order (Government Order No. 338-Edu of 2016 dated 16.9.2016) envisaging certain reforms in its detention policy at elementary and secondary level exams by introducing special remedial teachings of required learning levels for the `Potential Learners’ (students who do not qualify in examination of class 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th but provisionally admitted in the next class). Remedial classes for a period of 2-3 months, immediately after the commencement of new academic session and during the vacations,
followed by reassessment for grade appropriate competencies, were envisaged for these `Potential Learners’ and in the event of inability to meet the qualification criteria in such reassessments, the students are to be detained. The Government further notified to do away with detention in Class 9th, entitling all students enrolled for Class 9th to appear in 10th Board examinations.
However, the policy review without taking all stakeholders into confidence has virtually turned the entire exercise in this regard into a fiasco and more problematic for the school education scenario in the State.
Due to apparent communication gap, schools are still in the state of confusion over the remedial classes and study material for the failures of class 9th while the situation is more
chaotic for the failure students of 8th standard in middle schools, who have been denied admission in the higher grade schools. In several rural schools, the `Potential Learners’ are not turning up for remedial classes thus allegedly forcing the concerned teachers preparing bogus attendance record.
Instead of those subjects, which the `Potential Learners’ could not qualify in T1 and T2 exams, different set of books are being taught in the remedial classes, which makes it difficult for these failure students to manage the load.
Further, the students, who could not qualify class 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th examination, are being taught same books of Level-I and Level-II thus putting students of different standard at par with each other for the reasons best known to the policy makers.
Because of the new system, another problem is being faced by the failures of class 8th, who have been provisionally admitted in class 9th, as they are not being accorded registration by the J&K Board of School Education. Despite their provisional admission in 9th class, they have yet to clear reassessment test after undergoing Lavel-I, Level-II and Level-III books, which is likely to take around two months whereas June 15 is the last date for J&KBOSE registration,
Before conclusion, lets us have a quick look over a last week episode, which speaks about the prevailing standard of school education in J&K, for which these slew of policies and reforms were introduced during the last two years. Deputy Commissioner (DC) Reasi, Ravinder Kumar visited Government High School Bhaga and entered in classroom of 10th standard having 17 students on roll and asked very simple questions to them on addition, multiplication and division of class 1st or 2nd level. However, none of these 10th standard students could solve the questions because of extremely poor teachings being imparted and casual approach of the school for impairing the learning level of students in particular and thus degrading overall education system in general.
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