Kashmir records below 35 percent regular classwork in over 2 years.
Srinagar, May 06: In the past two-and-a-half years, the schools in Kashmir have remained open for regular classwork for even below 35 percent of the framed academic sessions, which has dealt a blow to the quality of education imparted to students.
Top officials of the School Education Department said since the year 2019, students have attended the schools for a maximum of 142 days out of total 408 working days.
The working session includes 180 days each in 2019 and 2020 and nearly 48 days of the ongoing academic year.
The officials said, “In one academic year there are a minimum of 180 working days and in the year 2019, less than 100 days of regular classwork was recorded by the School Education Department.”
In 2019, a maximum of 99 working days for regular academics were recorded, 15 days in 2020 and nearly 28 days in 2021 so far, they said.
In 2019 schools and colleges of Kashmir valley reopened on March 11 following a winter vacation break of around more than three months.
However, on August-05 following the abrogation of Article-370, the government and private schools were asked to remain closed and till then the schools had recorded regular classwork of less than 100 working days.
The schools however reopened on February 24 in 2020 and resumed the regular academics following the closure of nearly seven months.
Ironically, barely after two weeks, the government on March 11 ordered closure of all public and private education institutes across Jammu and Kashmir in view of the outbreak of coronavirus.
Besides, in those two weeks no regular academic activities were held in the previous academic year.
For the current year, the schools reopened in a staggered manner for academic activities in Kashmir division with higher classes on March 1, class 6 to 8 on March 08 and K.G to Class 5 on March 15 respectively.
However, the schools could hardly function regularly for a month because on April 04 the government ordered closure of all schools in Jammu and Kashmir till May 31, 2021, in view of the rapid surge in COVID-19 positive cases.