In the recent past School Education Department, J&K undertook a slew of measures to re-establish trust in Government run institutions.
To infuse a degree of punctuality among teachers and to monitor the arrival and departure of teaching and non teaching staff at various hierarchal levels, the department has introduced Smart JK Attendance app.
It enables a teacher to check in and check out only in school premises as the geographical coordinates other than school premises would not open unless the teacher either applies for training or is deputed to some other official duty.
But the same needs to be verified by the concerned Head of the Institution through his/her log-in account. It has replaced and done away with manual attendance on attendance register which unfortunately was susceptible to insertion and forgery.
The National Education Policy 2020 vociferously advocates empowering students; equip them with the 21st century skills, transform their lives to effectively mitigate the challenges of 21st century.
To strike a balancing cord with NEP 2020 and actualize its implementation at the ground level, the School Education Department, J&K came up with a novel idea of empowering students to provide monthly feedback about the existing facilities at the institutional level.
More importantly the feedback pertaining to their concerned subject teachers. The students have to provide feedback about their teachers – the command of teacher over the pedagogical approach, the behaviour of the teacher in the classroom, inclusivity of teacher in accommodating students from all shades of life, adherence of teacher to the compliance of no corporal punishment and verbal abuse in the classroom etc.
On pilot basis students from classes 6th to 12th have to record their feedback through virtual mode on SMIKSHA portal and the same feedback gets reflected on the dashboards of hierarchal officials of education department right from HOI to worthy commissioner secretary.
The launch of SMIKSHA portal to record feedback of students finds greater compatibility with the recommendations of NEP 2020 which strongly believes in rendering 21st century students as indispensable stakeholders of current education system rather than considering them as mere recipients of black and white information. If our country has to become the ‘Vishwa Guru’ in actualized sense, we have to consider our students as co-creaters of new knowledge and part of the solution to the existing complex problems rather than passive listeners.
The ball lies in the court of teachers to let their students provide feedback about them on SMIKSHA portal. The students’ feedback if assimilated can truly facilitate a teacher to further hone his pedagogical skills and materialize into a professional of highest acumen and caliber.
The past practices of the department have become redundant and the overhaul of education system is overdue. Unfortunately better performing teacher and poorly performing teacher, were meted with equal treatment in terms of salary, increment, seniority and time bound promotions. There was no positive reinforcement for the better performing teacher and no punishment for the poorly performing teacher. It proved to be a de-motivating factor even for good teachers and that ultimately adversely shadowed on the performance of the public education system. But over the years few result oriented initiatives have been introduced to get the things back on track. The yearly increment of teachers has been linked with the performance in board exams and in case the performance is not satisfactory or if the result of the concerned subject teacher is less than 50% either in class 8th, 10th or 12th, his yearly increment is immediately with-held. The extra-ordinary contribution of teachers is even celebrated at the UT level and their performance is incentivized with a cash reward of 50000 rupees and a memento on the eve of Teachers’ Day.
The School Education Department has seen transition in exponential ways, be it the infrastructure expansion, Child Education Allowance to the employees of the department, online rationalization of teaching and non-teaching staff, transfer of masters, headmasters, lecturers, ZEOs and principals through Annual Transfer Drive ( ATD). This has happened first time in the history of education department. The current dispensation needs to be applauded for such pro-teacher and pro-student effort.
One of the long pending demands of the teaching community was examination based promotions in education department which was time and again reiterated by worthy Commissioner Secretary Education Mr. Alok Kumar and worthy Chief Secretary Mr. Arun Kumar Mehta on various public platforms. Recently School Education Department, Jammu and Kashmir came up with a draft proposal in public domain for objections regarding updation/ Revision of Jammu and Kashmir School Education (Gazetted ) Service Recruitment rules -2023. Besides suggesting other changes, the centre of debate is the proposal for limited departmental examination to be conducted by JKPSC and preparation of syllabus for the same by JKSCERT. In the proposed draft B.Ed degree has been added to the existing qualification of PG only as per National Council For Teacher Education (NCTE). For fixing the seniority of a candidate, date of passing of higher qualification required for acquiring full eligibility for promotions be taken as of date off inclusion in seniority in addition to the date of appointment. The recommendations of this draft proposal after its finalization can truly be a beginning of new era for the department of education.
Dr. Mushtaq Rather, Educator and Research Scholar.