Sadaket Ali Malik
sadaketjammu@gmail.com
When Jammu and Kashmir enters national discourse, security, politics, and infrastructure dominate attention while education remains pushed to the margins, yet the PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024, India’s largest competency-based national assessment conducted across 781 districts, 74,229 schools and more than 21.15 lakh students of Grades 3, 6 and 9, exposes an alarming and system-wide learning crisis in the Union Territory that demands urgent correction, because across all three assessed stages—Foundational (Grade 3), Preparatory (Grade 6) and Middle (Grade 9)—not a single district of Jammu and Kashmir figures among the high-performing districts of the country, while multiple districts repeatedly appear among the lowest performers, signalling a structural and cumulative failure rather than isolated weakness; at the foundational stage, where basic literacy and numeracy are supposed to be secured, districts such as Reasi, Rajouri, Bandipora, Udhampur and Samba are listed among India’s 50 lowest-performing districts, meaning that children in these regions are entering schooling without mastering reading comprehension, basic vocabulary, number sense, addition, subtraction and simple problem-solving skills, and national data itself shows that even at the all-India level only around 60–64 percent children could correctly answer Grade 3 language and mathematics questions, with mathematics competencies like geometry, money transactions and division dropping close to 50 percent, making the condition of low-performing districts like those in J&K even more precarious; what is more disturbing is that these early learning gaps do not shrink with time but widen as children move ahead, because at the preparatory stage (Grade 6) districts including Reasi, Rajouri, Samba, Bandipora, Udhampur, Kupwara, Kathua and Ramban fall among the lowest performers nationally, even as the survey shows that at the national level average scores hover around 55 percent in language, 47 percent in mathematics and below 50 percent in “The World Around Us”, indicating that J&K’s low-performing districts are operating far below already modest national averages, particularly in mathematics where competencies like fractions record only 29 percent correctness nationally and problem-solving and measurement competencies remain below 40 percent, reflecting that students in districts such as Kupwara, Ramban and Kathua are being promoted without conceptual clarity; by the time students reach the middle stage (Grade 9), where analytical thinking across language, mathematics, science and social science is expected, learning deficits in Jammu and Kashmir become deeply entrenched, with districts like Reasi, Rajouri, Ramban and Poonch again appearing among the bottom 50 districts of the country, and national Grade 9 data itself showing mathematics competencies sinking to 28–41 percent, science mostly remaining between 33–47 percent, and social science frequently below 40 percent, making it evident that in chronically weak districts of J&K schooling has turned into syllabus completion and examination formality rather than meaningful learning; two districts—Reasi and Rajouri—stand out for the wrong reasons, as they recur in the low-performing lists at all three stages, marking them as chronically vulnerable education zones where institutional neglect, weak academic supervision, insufficient teacher mentoring and absence of structured remedial mechanisms have accumulated over years, while other districts like Bandipora, Kupwara, Ramban, Kathua, Samba, Udhampur and Poonch show stage-specific vulnerability, collectively proving that the crisis cuts across regions, terrains and administrative divisions; taken together, the district-wise pattern makes one thing unmistakably clear: educational underperformance in Jammu and Kashmir is widespread and systemic, affecting districts across the Jammu region—Jammu, Samba, Kathua, Udhampur, Reasi, Doda, Ramban, Kishtwar, Rajouri and Poonch—and across the Kashmir region—Srinagar, Ganderbal, Budgam, Pulwama, Shopian, Anantnag, Kulgam, Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipora—though some districts escape the bottom lists, none emerge as high performers, underscoring the absence of academic leadership capable of pushing excellence; this failure cannot be explained away by geography alone, because while districts like Kupwara, Bandipora, Ramban and Kishtwar face difficult terrain and access challenges, others like Kathua, Samba, Jammu, Srinagar and Budgam enjoy comparatively better connectivity and infrastructure, yet fail to translate these advantages into learning outcomes, pointing towards deeper issues of governance, teacher deployment, classroom practice and accountability; to be fair, Jammu and Kashmir’s education system operates under extraordinary pressures, including harsh winters, frequent disruptions, socio-economic stress, teacher shortages in remote areas and long-standing instability, but PARAKH 2024 demonstrates that comparable regions elsewhere have achieved better outcomes through focused academic leadership, early diagnosis and sustained intervention, while J&K has failed to arrest learning loss at any stage; the survey data also clearly shows that learning gaps originate early and solidify over time, which means that unless foundational literacy and numeracy are treated as an emergency, later investments will continue to yield diminishing returns, and districts like Reasi and Rajouri require intensive, multi-year academic recovery missions, while districts such as Bandipora, Kupwara, Ramban, Kathua, Samba and Udhampur need context-sensitive strategies addressing both access and instructional quality; equally critical is accountability, because district education leadership must be evaluated on student learning outcomes rather than files, construction targets or enrolment figures, and transparent district-wise progress tracking must become a public measure of governance; education remains Jammu and Kashmir’s most reliable path to dignity, stability and opportunity, and while roads, buildings and schemes offer visibility, it is classrooms in Jammu, Srinagar, Anantnag, Baramulla, Doda, Kishtwar, Poonch and Kupwara that will determine the region’s future, and the district-level evidence from PARAKH
Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024 leaves no room for complacency, because unless urgent, targeted and evidence-driven action is taken now, educational disadvantage in Jammu and Kashmir will continue to reproduce itself across generations, turning today’s learning crisis into tomorrow’s social tragedy.
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