Kashmir News Bureau
Srinagar, Feb 22 (KNB): Quality Education is needed for making education system free of faults. Quality education is considered as a primary need for every literate society to see the fruit growing in every field of the society. The quality of the education at both country level and the state level is disappointing.
Both at School level and Higher education there are more major challenges with respect to providing of quality education. Less enrollments in higher education, poor results in government schools , the lopsided teacher- student ratio, limited number of universities with huge number of aspirants , outdated syllabus, rote learning are some of the major challenges faced with regard to providing quality education in the state.
Activists say on the other hand the need to implement the historic Right to Education Act (RTE) is direly felt in Jammu And Kashmir State.
This act envisages the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education and received much praise due to its mandatory provision to provide 25% reservation for disadvantaged children in private schools.
On the other hand, the higher education is in great distress as quantity is dominating quality. To add to woes, the very few quality higher education institutes hamper the aspirants.
Tariq Abdullah, a well- known media strategist and research scholar in Quality Education states – “ At school level there is dire need to make the syllabus more creative and dynamic so that it connects with the students and make it more competitive so that our children shine on global radar. Both at national level and the state level the enrollment of students in higher education presents distressing picture as it stands just at 18 percent while as it is 44 percent globally. Now we are making information communication technology driven initiatives to increase enrollments and also focus on quality not just quantity.”
Tariq Abdullah believes that lack of focus on Skill and technical education in this day and age is also great impediment in our education system. He adds – “We can ensure quality education only when we refocus on providing skill based and technical education to our students so that the soaring unemployment rates are checked.”
On the otherhand, educationists are calling for setting up of more quality private universities to cope up with needs and prevent brain drain.
Jaffar Allie, an educationist states – “In small cities of country we are having hundreds of engineering and nursing colleges and private universities while as in the Kashmir valley the processes have been made much difficult even to set a single institute to meet students needs . We call upon the government to provide permission for setting quality private institutes and make process easy for experts having aspiration to set the same.”
Sanam Ara, a parent states – “Our Schools both private and government need to make focus on more the activity based education and the student-teacher ratio is also quiet abnormal especially in government schools. At some public schools of Kashmir, a very few teachers have to cater to hundreds of students. While in some parts of the Kashmir Valley, twenty to twenty five teachers are rendering education to just five to ten pupils. At a number of places in Kashmir, the education system is literally being conducted under open air and the frequent climatic hassles brings to grinding halt the functioning of such open air schools. Rote learning has been another burning issue as in most of the instances parrot memory is focus.”
Expert Pulse is that Quality Education Picture in the state needs a big revamp from all parameters. (KNB)