The recent trends coming to fore with regard to the school education department have set alarm bells ringing for the authorities. It demands plugging the gaps in the basic functioning of the department with special focus on the primary schools which form the foundation stage of the education sector.

The closure of the schools, the decline in the student enrolment in existing schools, and the poor learning outcomes among the students have thrown out a major challenge for the department to go beyond meetings and explore what caused a downfall in the government-run-education system.

Recently, a revelation came to fore exposing the mis-utilisation of the resources in the School Education Department as the student population as per the UDISE 2023-24 has reduced to zero in 119 schools leaving services of over 200 teachers unutilised.

The schools with zero enrolment exist mostly in Srinagar and Jammu cities besides other towns located adjacent to these cities.

This revelation came almost nine years after the government in 2015 clubbed 2400 schools for having meagre or zero enrolment.

As per the latest UDISE 2023-24 data J&K has 24241 schools including 18724 government run schools and 5517 private schools.

Some decades ago, the Government of India launched the much hyped SSA scheme with a vision to provide free and compulsory education to children between 6 and 14 years of age.

However, in Jammu and Kashmir, the scheme has gone down the drain over the years as 24 percent of the schools established under the flagship programme faced closure due to zero or less enrolment of the students.

As per the official figures, since the inception of the scheme, as many as 18021 schools– primary 10690 and upper primary schools-7331 were established under the scheme.

Out of this, around 2400 schools were clubbed under the process of........

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