77% of J&K schools are govt schools, yet they only enrol 54% of students: MoE report

By: Riyaz Bhat

Srinagar: Despite having a share of more than 77 percent of government-run-schools in Jammu and Kashmir, the School Education Department has managed to enrol only 54 percent of students—thus raising a question on quality and functioning of the department.

The Ministry of Education (MoE) for Government of India (GoI) in a recent report has said, “The UT has 77.32 percent government schools out of the total number of schools. However, a matter of concern is that only 54.06 percent of students are enrolled in these government-run schools.”

The MoE said, “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,” reads the report.

Furthermore, the ministry has said that out of the total 18,785 government schools, only 3304 that amounts to 17.6 percent schools have solar panels installed. “Further, there are very few secondary or senior secondary schools without ICT and computer labs, smart classrooms and subject specific labs in the UT.”

The MoE suggested that these gaps can be saturated this year only. Accordingly UT was advised to identify the gaps through UDISE+ and propose these schools in the current year Annual Work Plan and Budget (AWP&B) for the consideration by the board.

Earlier this week KNO reported that MoE in the report had said that in Jammu and Kashmir at least 65 government schools are having zero student enrolment and more than five thousand primary schools are with less than 30 enrolment and over 1500 schools are reeling under enrolment with only 15 students each.

MoE had said, “Out of the total 18,785 government schools in the UT, there are 65 schools including 62 primary and three upper primary schools are with zero enrolment.” —(KNO)