Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, July 13: Minister for Education, Naeem Akhtar today said that rationalization process initiated by the Government in the School Education Department is not at all aimed at closing the schools and entire exercise is being carried out for the optimum benefit of the students by only co-locating the institutions in order to properly utilize the infrastructure and available teaching staff.
Talking to EXCELSIOR, Mr Akhtar said that there are 24,000 educational institutions across the State with 1.40 lakh teaching staff and annually Rs 6000 crore worth funds are utilized in the education sector in the State. However, the students of the Government schools are finding it difficult to compete with their counterparts in the private educational institutions only because of failure of the respective Governments to properly utilize the available resources.
“It is unfortunate that Government school students are nowhere in the race in the present era of competition mainly because of the fact that focus was always on the expansion and not on ensuring quality education by making optimum use of the available resources”, he said.
Stating that expansion was haphazard, the Education Minister said, “the unplanned expansion can be gauged from the fact that there are 5000 schools across Jammu and Kashmir which have less than 20 enrolment”. Quoting more instances, he said that in many schools despite poor enrolment, a number of teachers continue to be posted in contradiction to the recommended Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) norm.
Similarly, in many schools teaching staff of a specific subject has been posted but the number of students opting for the same is very small rather inadequate to justify continuation of such subject. Moreover, there are instances where though the subject stream has been introduced but due to non- posting of teaching staff, the students cannot opt for the stream thereby constraining their choice, the Minister said.
Keeping all these and other shocking facts, the Government decided to conduct rationalization exercise, which during a short span has started yielding encouraging results, Mr Akhtar further said while disclosing that in Baramulla there are 27 Government schools within a radius of one kilometer with 700 students and 96 teachers but in the adjoining area a private school is having 2400 students with 73 teachers. “This is the testimony of expansion in haphazard manner”, he said, adding “as part of rationalization we have amalgamated 4-5 schools adopted by the college in the vicinity and the results are very encouraging”.
Refuting the canards being spread from certain quarters, the Minister said, “rationalization exercise doesn’t mean closure of the schools. We are only co-locating the institutions with the sole objective of providing optimum benefit of the teaching staff and infrastructure to the students”.
Stating that Government has not initiated rationalization exercise blindly, Naeem Akhtar said, “we have kept those schools where students are required to cover even half a kilometer of forest area or cross a nullah out of the co-opting exercise as after all convenience and benefit of the students community is the primary objective of rationalization exercise”, adding “moreover, we have laid benchmarks for carrying out rationalization exercise so that injustice is not done to any student in any area of the State”.
Stating that Government wanted to infuse new lease of life in the prevailing system, the Minister said that legislators have been asked to adopt schools in their constituencies for upgradation purpose. “Smart classes have been introduced for the benefit of students and facilities like labs are being provided so that our students become able enough to compete with the students of private schools”.
Very shortly, the rationalization exercise would yield positive results and stop its critics, he said.
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