Ensure saturation of facilities in all schools by March 2025: MoE tells J&K

Srinagar, May 4: The Ministry of Education (MoE), Government of India (GoI), has asked the J&K School Education Department (SED) to ensure saturation of all the facilities in schools by March 31, 2025.

The directions come in the wake of the Chief Secretaries conference held last year.

The directions for the saturation of facilities have been issued at a time when the majority of schools are without basic facilities of playgrounds, laboratories, libraries and other facilities for the school children.

As per the official document, the MoE has said that all the government schools under the Samagra Shiksha have been equipped with various facilities to ensure that all children, regardless of differences, have universal access to schooling.

“As decided in the 3rd Chief Secretaries conference, the focus should be now on saturation of facilities such as portable drinking water, electricity, girls' and boys' toilets, sports facility, and sports field by March 31, 2025,” the official document reads.

The issue was discussed in the last Project Approval Board (PB) meeting convened by the Department of School Education and Literacy (DSEL) in February this year.

The meeting was convened to review and consider the Annual Work Plan and Budget (AWP&B), 2024-25 under Samagra Shiksha for J&K.

“To ensure access to sports fields, it was proposed to conduct mapping at the panchayat level to determine how many schools have such access. Based on this mapping, provisions at the cluster level may be considered, where children can be organised into batches to visit the sports field,” the official document reads.

Besides the saturation of facilities in schools, the MoE has also made its observations regarding the incomplete skill education laboratories in the Jammu and Kashmir schools.

“It was observed that of the 1315 skill education labs approved to J&K, only 553 are functional and 762 are pending. These include the pre-samagra Shiksha years," the document reads.

As per the official document, the Secretary DSEL, who chaired the meeting, has emphasised that the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, underscores the importance of skill education for all students, especially those in the secondary stage of schooling.

“J&K is asked to reassess these previous approvals in light of the changing job roles and develop a list of proposed new roles that could be created following the requirements,” the document reads.

Regarding displaying photographs of teachers in schools,  the MoE has said that J&K has not reported the data regarding the display of photographs of teachers in government schools.

“As per the 3rd Chief Secretaries Conference to address the issue of proxy teachers and teacher absenteeism, J&K was urged to ensure that photographs of teachers are displayed and updated in all schools,” the official document reads.

Meanwhile, J&K has sought financial support for around 25,393 Out of School Children (OoSC) for the financial year 2024-25.

However, the MoE has said that the basic role of the School Management Committees (SMCs) should be monitoring and supervising this exercise regularly to ensure that all students enrolled are coming to school and not dropping out.

“Special centres have been provided by NIOS across the country for students in government schools through support of NIOS for Out of School Children,” the document reads.