Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, Jan 19: The Director of School Education, Tasaduq Hussain, reaffirmed today that all private schools must use the Board of School Education (BOSE)-recommended textbooks for classes 6th to 8th in the upcoming academic year.
He made these remarks during a press conference here. He said that the department is running anti-drug and anti-smoking initiatives throughout the Valley under Nasha Mukt Bharat and that the sale of tobacco products is completely prohibited within a 500-meter radius of schools.
He made it clear that just the exams taken in March will be taken into consideration. “The schools held practice exams to make sure the students would be ready for the final exams. Although there is no problem with anyone starting to prepare for the next session early, certificates will only be valid for exams in March,” he said.
About students’ poor reading skills as shown in the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022, he said that they would work to close any gaps in their knowledge because they had dubbed this year the Year of excellence and transformation.
“If you look at the NAS ranking as of right now, we have moved up from 18th to somewhere between fifth and sixth. This is a constant process, and we are working on filling in the gaps by increasing reading habits and library visits among students,” he said
He said that due to the abundance of school buildings in the Valley, the department has given away roughly 666 buildings to other departments. “If you see statistics regarding the number of buildings, we have more buildings. We allocated 666 buildings to other departments. To address the issue of buildings-where some villages have more while others have the greater infrastructure-we are merging the schools. In the next five years, we will give single-room schools priority and develop at least five classrooms there. If necessary, we will also rent out classrooms,” he said.
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