VIKAS SHARMA
JAMMU : Of total 28805 schools in the Union Territory (UT) of Jammu and Kashmir, mere 337 schools have the Digital Library whereas only 611 schools have the provision of Rainwater Harvesting System. This has been revealed in the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) report published by the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education (MoE).
The report has exposed the tall claims by the successive regimes in the erstwhile State about strengthening of the School Education Sector. Even though J&K UT has performed well in few parameters like drinking water facility, girls toilets, boys toilets but still lacked in various parameters which is a real cause of concern.
As far as Solar Panels are concerned only 2583 schools have the same while just 3423 schools have Kitchen Gardens. Only 2841 schools have Computers used for pedagogical purposes whereas 2789 schools have functional computers used for pedagogical purposes. As far as internet facilities are concerned, only 8566 schools have this facility.
Despite a number of reminders by the central ministry to ensure Ramp and Handrails and toilet facilities for Children with Special Needs (CWSN), J&K UT continues to perform poorly. Only 4280 schools have the facility of Ramp and Handrails. Just 1236 schools have toilet facilities for CWSN.
Of total 28805 schools, 14824 are Primary, 9565 are Upper Primary, 3150 are Secondary and 1266 are Higher Secondary. Total enrollment in the schools is 2718644 whereas there are 167106 teachers. The Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) in J&K schools is 16 whereas there are 6 teachers per school. The average enrollment per school is 94.
Overall, in 2021-22 total students enrolled in school education from primary to higher secondary stood at 25.57 crore as compared to 25.38 crore enrolment in 2020-21, registering an increase of 19.36 lakh enrolments. Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) which measures the general level of participation has improved in 2021-22 at primary, upper primary, and higher secondary levels of school education, as compared to 2020-21. Notably, GER in higher secondary schools has made significant improvement from 53.8 percent in 2021-21 to 57.6 percent in 2021-22.
Total enrolment of CWSN in 2021-22 stands at 22.67 lakh as compared to 21.91 lakh in 2020-21 showing an improvement of 3.45 percent over 2020-21. 95.07 lakh teachers are engaged in school education during 2021-22 out of which more than 51 percent are female teachers.
Further, in 2021-22, PTR stood at 26 for primary, 19 for upper primary, 18 for secondary and 27 for higher secondary, showing an improvement since 2018-19. The PTR for primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary was 28, 19, 21, and 30 respectively during 2018-19.
Total number of schools in 2021-22 stood at 14.89 lakhs as compared to 15.09 lakhs in 2020-21. The decline in total schools is mainly due to closure of private and other management schools and grouping/ clustering of schools by various States.