Fulfilling its commitment towards ensuring inclusive education in Jammu and Kashmir, the government has transferred Rs 165.09 lakh into the bank accounts of eligible Children with Special Needs (CWSN) through DBT in 2022. These allowances have been disbursed on account of different allowances like escort allowance, reader allowances and stipend for girls.
Besides, 3 day workshop in collaboration with JKBOSE was organized in March 2022 to extend board accommodations to CWSN on the pattern of CBSE. The workshop was attended by more than 30 experts in the field including from CBSE and NCERT. The Right to Education (RTE) Act, introduced in 2012, allows Children With Special Needs to pursue mainstream education (inclusive education) irrespective of their impairment.
The Act says that a child with ‘disability’, as defined by the Persons with Disability Act 1995 and the National Trust Act, has the right to free and compulsory education as per the provisions of Chapter V of the PWD Act. Under the Special Enrollment Drive “AAO SCHOOL CHALEIN”, 1.50 lakh students were enrolled in government schools of Jammu and Kashmir during the winter session. The drive emphasized on strengthening of pre-schooling of children in the age group of 3 to 5 years and focus on increasing overall enrollment in government schools by re-enrolment of dropout students and the children who have never been enrolled in school.
Besides, TALAASH APP has been launched for digitized survey of out of school children to mainstream them. All the drop out and out of School Children shall be mapped with the nearby Educational Institutions so that they may also get the job opportunities after getting proper education. The School Education Department would soon be launching “Students Mentorship”- Student Teacher Engagement for Educational Reinforcement (STEER) programme.
Under the initiative, teachers shall play the role of Mentor for every ten students of Primary School in the first phase. The idea is to achieve excellence in the education sector besides improving the academic standards in the basic classes. The same shall be replicated among the higher classes in a phased manner while evaluation and assessment shall be monitored through Mentoring portal developed for the purpose.
Terming Education as a catalyst for growth and development of the Nation, Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha, underlined the importance of making new educational reforms so that no one remains deprived of this fundamental right of education. “We are working hard towards bringing in reformative innovations in the education sector to achieve bigger goal like “Education for All”, he maintained.
The government is taking comprehensive measures to bridge the social and gender gaps in school education besides ensuring equity and inclusion at all levels to streamline J&K’s literacy rate, observed the LG. Significantly, J&K topped the country under National Initiative for School Heads and Teachers Holistic Advancement (NISHTHA) programme with 80600 Elementary Teachers Trained through online mode using DIKSHA portal.
Emphasizing for capacity building of teachers, Lieutenant Governor asked the School Education Department to rationalize the Pupil-Teacher ratio besides conducting regular training of teachers in order to make them acquainted with the know-how of the modern educational tools which will go a long way in improving the quality of education and enhancing learning outcomes.
