SRINAGAR: Chief Secretary Dr Arun Kumar Mehta, on Thursday unveiled the inaugural school ranking and teacher grading initiative in Jammu & Kashmir. The report, compiled through feedback collected via the SAMIKSHA App and portal, developed by the School Education Department, represents a significant advancement in assessing teacher and school performance.
A total of 2696 schools have been rated as efficient, with an additional 4441 schools being recognised as flourishing. Furthermore, 1857 schools were graded as excellent, and 31340 received a rating of very good for their teaching standards.
Present at the event were Principal Secretary School Education Alok Kumar, Project Director Samagra Shiksha Deep Raj, Director School Education Kashmir Tassaduq Hussain, Special Secretary School Education Naseer Wani, among others.
Dr Mehta lauded this groundbreaking initiative by the School Education Department, which promises to offer real-time insights into the state of education, empowering parents and administrators to make informed decisions and improve school infrastructure and teacher training.
He stressed that the government’s teachers are highly qualified, and while training is essential, teachers must also adopt innovative and pedagogical teaching methods to achieve better results. SAMIKSHA, Dr Mehta emphasised, will provide an objective evaluation of teacher performance, eliminating subjectivity.
The Chief Secretary advised the School Education department to use this feedback as a benchmark for analysing teachers’ annual performance and urged officers to work towards making the education system more dynamic and aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
He underscored J&K’s commitment to digitalisation and transparency, stating that the region is moving towards a 100% digital and transparent system, becoming the first in the country to rank schools through the SAMIKSHA App. The government plans to conduct quarterly reviews and implement improvements gradually based on available resources.
Dr Mehta hoped that other states and union territories would view J&K as a model to emulate, highlighting the region’s capacity, capability, and digital initiatives that have enabled its progress.
Principal Secretary Alok Kumar explained that Samiksha generates reports on teacher performance and school status based on student feedback. Students can provide feedback in Hindi, English, and Urdu on various aspects of school facilities, schemes, and teacher behavior in the classroom.
The feedback is collected monthly from students in classes 6th to 12th, and the schools are ranked and teachers are graded accordingly.
Project Director Samagra Shiksha presented the system, revealing that 642,231 students and 74,790 teachers from 9,757 schools were involved in the feedback process for September 2023. The results categorised schools as Efficient, Flourishing, Very Good, Good, or Striving, while teachers were rated as Excellent, Very Good, Good, Average, or Below Average based on a 100-point scale.
