Srinagar, Feb 11: The School Education Department (SED) has said that it has not engaged any subject-specific teachers as per the recruitment made through the Jammu and Kashmir Service Selection Board (SSB) and Rehbar-e-Taleem (ReT) scheme of the government.
The statement was made while the SED refuted the story published by Greater Kashmir in its Saturday, February 10, 2024, edition.
The story highlighted the issue of the non-availability of the subject teachers in upper primary and secondary level sections of the government schools.
The issue was pointed out in the official documents of the Ministry of Education (MoE) which were framed to analyse the progress on the budget approved in favour of the Jammu and Kashmir’s School Education Department (SED) in the last five years. The 89-slide PowerPoint presentation while highlighting various indicators also pointed out that only 22.8 percent of upper primary sections of government schools have subject teachers.
The MoE also highlighted that only 46.5 percent of secondary schools have teachers for all core subjects.
The same figures were quoted and published by Greater Kashmir to highlight the grave issue prevailing in the government schools across Jammu and Kashmir.
“As per the recruitment made through SSB or ReT, no subject-specific teachers have been recruited or engaged. These are all general line teachers who are capable of teaching Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and languages in the schools,” the SED statement reads.
The SED in its rebuttal has acknowledged that as per UDISE, 10,104 schools are without concrete ramps for which efforts are being made to construct them in a phased manner.
“Temporary ramps in the leftover schools have been placed and are functional. Recently, funds amounting to Rs 2.62 crore have also been released for the construction of ramps in schools. Moreover, the schools where children with special needs are enrolled, have been given priority for the construction of ramps,” the SED statement reads.
Refuting the Greater Kashmir story which highlighted the non-availability of playgrounds in schools, the SED has acknowledged the claim and stated that 8339 schools, which had availability of land, had playground facilities.
“Further, funding is being provided in case of schools, have space for a playground, for its proper development. However, to ensure that the children have access to sports facilities, where playground facilities could not be developed due to lack of land availability, the government has developed playgrounds in every Panchayat where students of schools also enjoy sports activities,” the SED statement reads.
The SED has sought to clarify that there are 18,723 government schools in Jammu and Kashmir as of date of which 8966 are primary schools, 7228 are upper primary schools, 1741 are high schools, and 788 are higher secondary schools.
“A total of 97,116 teachers have been placed in government schools of J&K for teaching from pre-primary to senior secondary classes,” the SED statement reads.
However, most of the text in the clarification was not relevant to the content of the story carried by Greater Kashmir that highlighted the dearth of subject-specific teachers in schools.
The SED gave an elaborate explanation of the Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) stating that the PTR in primary schools was 1:13, 1:9 in upper primary schools, 1:14 in secondary schools, and 1:30 at higher secondary school level compared to PTR of 1:26, 1:19, 1:17, and 1:27 at the primary, upper primary, secondary, and senior secondary stages at the national level.
The story carried by Greater Kashmir had no mention of the PTR of government schools and no such comparison was made about the PTR in J&K schools and at the national level.
“There were some schools in J&K, which were having a single teacher but J&K was among the few states and union territories to implement the School Complex System Policy as mandated under the NEP-2020,” the statement read.
The SED statement said that under the guidelines issued for School Complex System, 762 school complexes had been formed in J&K and rationalisation of teachers had been made at different levels to ensure that no “single teacher school” exists in J&K.
However, the Greater Kashmir story did not highlight the number of schools across J&K having single teachers.
The SED said that the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) launched by the MoE had the fields of Science, Math, SST, and language teachers in schools and as such the data was filled by teachers from the school level to ensure compliance and the data of the updated UDISE reflects the availability of more than 90 percent teachers in upper primary schools in all subjects, though they were competent and qualified to teach subjects other than those reflected against them.
“As such, it is clarified that there is no dearth of teachers in the upper primary schools to teach any specific subjects. However, the subject-specific teachers are recruited at higher secondary level and there was a deficiency of those subject-specific teachers at the beginning of the academic year 2023-24. To address that, the government has engaged 1496 Cluster Resource Coordinators, who are subject-specific and have been deployed in the remote schools where there was a shortage of teachers,” the SED statement reads.
The contents presented by the SED were irrelevant to the Greater Kashmir story as there was no mention of the cluster or complex system of schools or the dearth of subject-specific teachers at higher secondary level.
“The J&K government is spending almost Rs 18 crore every year to strengthen the libraries and the library books have been provided in all the 18,723 schools from primary to senior secondary level for making student knowledge enriched about the general awareness, environment, and other health and hygienic conditions as envisaged in the library guidelines,” the SED statement reads.
However, the SED statement counters its official data which states that 9925 schools across J&K do not have proper library facilities for students in government schools.
The story published by Greater Kashmir did not mention the non-availability of library books in schools but highlighted the issue of the non-availability of libraries (or library rooms) in schools.
“Efforts are also made to construct the special library rooms where the same doesn’t exist and 617 library rooms are under construction in different schools. Presently, libraries have been established in all schools as per the space availability,” the SED statement reads.
The SED has further mentioned the Annual Transfer Drive (ATD) which had no mention in the story in a negative way.
The SED in its statement talked about its commitment to enhance the competency of the teachers saying that a lot of stress was being laid on the training of teachers for their orientation to improve the learning outcomes of the students.
It also said that capacity building programmes, orientation, and training programmes under TTAP in 2023-24 were attended by over 40,000 teachers.
All these statements are not relevant to the story published by Greater Kashmir as it only focused on the non-availability of subject-specific teachers and facilities like playgrounds, ramps, and libraries.
The SED mentioned the 17 percent increase in enrolment in 2022-23 and stated that the government was committed to revamping the overall education system of the J&K.
The SED said that around 3500 civil works had been completed under Samagra Shiksha and equal works were under execution at different stages.
The SED also mentioned the establishment of model kindergartens and the improvement of infrastructure in schools saying that 92 percent of schools had their buildings.
It said that 100 model playgrounds at Rs 20 crore were being developed under the Samagra Shiksha.
In its rebuttal, the SED acknowledged that no subject-specific teachers were recruited or engaged by the department and also admitted the dearth of playgrounds, ramps, and libraries in schools.
The correspondent stands by the story carried in Greater Kashmir’s Saturday, February 10, 2024, edition.