Jammu and Kashmir State had a distinction of being one of the top states in the country where not only there used to be a good standard of education but the entire infrastructure imparting education was getting preferred attention and care from the Government. The requirements of the quality and the availability of a proper ambiance, orthe buildings of schools and other educational institutions with facilities like playground etc were receiving due attentiveness and consideration from the State Education Department. There used to be a system of periodic surprise inspection of schools by Education Department authorities to take stock of the running , administration and the level of quality of education imparted to the students. Where have all these prerequisites of a sound education policy in its elementary or rudimentary form gone in Jammu and Kashmir ? Has this proud part of the State Administration and governance now being conveniently offered on a platter to the private sector? There are lot many questions which the State Education Department and the Government have to reply.
We are pained to bring home to the State Education authorities, the politicians and other concerned agencies just one glaring instance of a school in Pampore (Kashmir) among numerous of course, of the failure by the authorities on the front of caring about the students , the schools and the elementary and basic facilities therein. We are committed to point out deficiencies, weaknesses, shortcomings and neglect in the proper management of schools. We have to inform about the callousness and total indifference towards the hardships faced by the students on account of ‘acute space constraints’ which has resulted into huddling and “stuffing” of 80 students of nine classes into just two rooms. To be precise, it is the State of affairs of Government Upper Primary School in Shar village on the outskirts of Pampore in South Kashmir’s Pulwama district. This school is just less than 14Kms far from Srinagar but still is away and farthest from the attention of the concerned authorities sitting in Srinagar which is rueable. If this is the extent and the level of investment of the Government in the future of school going children with intent to building and shaping them into tomorrow’s responsible , educated and refined citizens, then we must have our fingers crossed.
Can under such circumstances, the poor students get proper coaching and training when what the teacher of class A is speaking to his or her group is audible to those in class B and vice versa? Can the teachers posted in this school, after leaving the school, each day feel satisfied at home about having done full justice to their assigned duty and responsibility? Can the head of this school justify running “a thing”called “a school” under such conditions? While a Government servant is expected to never indulge in insubordination nor question the lawful decision and the authority of his or her superiors as that would constitute a gross misconduct under service rules, there can be issues and grounds where one had to act on humanitarian and moral grounds and effectively speak and write too, laced with strong request to review a faulty position. The head and the teachers of this school must have been never thinking on such lines and in cumulative sense, that is the reason of the existence of the system with dots of stinking.
We would have hailed had some political activists and leaders taken up this issue even through peaceful protests, the problem being of sensitive nature since relating to school going children, to shake the inertial apathy of the authorities. The misfortune, however, is that political leadership and activism remains confined to “other issues” but the immediate sufferers are innocents, in this case, future of the country, the faultless students.
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