by Syed Shadab Ali Gillani
SRINAGAR: Educationists and the political class in Kashmir have asked the government not to impose CBSE in Kashmir entirely. They have said the educational institutions in private and public sector must stay affiliated with the Jammu and Kashmir State Board of School Education (JKBOSE).
Official sources said the Jammu and Kashmir’s Education Department was, infact, contacted by the Ministry of Education (MoE) seeking a timeline for the affiliation JKBOSE-affiliated schools with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). This, they said, was the outcome of a system in vogue in which the educational set-up in all Union Territories is affiliated with the CBSE. In fact, the Ladakh school set-up is already affiliated with the CBSE after the region was separated from Jammu and Kashmir and made a UT.
Though some of the schools – in private and public sector – are already affiliated with the CBSE, this is for the first time that the NCERT set up could be replaced by the CBSE.
After the communication was received by the education department has started assessing the possibility within the department.
Some government schools in Srinagar have previously been affiliated with CBSE under a process started by the J&K SED. The procedure, however, was eventually stopped for some unknown reasons. The SED has been instructed to handle the situation as “urgent” and to provide the information on all the schools within the specified time limit.
As the news moved around, it triggered widespread reactions from different stakeholders in Kashmir. Communist leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami on Tuesday voiced deep concern over the reports regarding the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) plan to affiliate all schools of Jammu and Kashmir with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
The move will do away with the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (JKBOSE) which since its inception has been playing an exemplary role in prescribing syllabus and conducting exams in an honest and transparent manner, he said in the statement.
“Even during the tough times in the Valley, the JKBOSE weathered through the storm. The schools in Jammu and Kashmir are free to affiliate themselves with CBSE after following the due procedures, and there are over 200 schools with such affiliations,” Tarigami said. “The JKBOSE will cease to function in case MoE affiliates all schools with CBSE. The move will result in hundreds of job losses in Jammu and Kashmir. CPI(M) urges upon MoE to revisit its proposal of affiliating all the schools with CBSE.”
Political class was not the only section that reacted to the idea. The Group of Concerned Citizens (GCC) J&K, a non-political civil society collective, also sought a review of the proposal on ‘compulsory affiliation of all (Government and Private) Schools in J&K with Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
“Under the J&K Board of School Education Act’1975, the J&K BOSE is entrusted with the development of curriculum and text books, conduct of examinations; affiliating /recognising institutions for the purpose of providing instruction; etc,” the group said in a statement. “In case all its affiliate schools were made to go for CBSE affiliation, the BOSE will functionally cease to exist with consequential plus -1000 job losses including the closure of 22 sub-Offices and 25 branch offices.”
The group in their statement also said that in the given dispensation, schools in J&K enjoy the free choice to affiliate with any of the boards including CBSE, subject to due process of law and regulations, whereby some 250 schools are already affiliated with CBSE.
The statement further states, J&K is not going to be a UT forever. The Education Ministry will be expected to take due cognisance of the assurances held out by Prime Minister and Home Minister in parliament (and outside) on the restoration of statehood. Any major change in the educational set-up in Jammu and Kashmir on the premise of it being a UT could prove to be unhelpful; rather counterproductive.
It was not immediately known what the education department has been doing on this issue. Despite numerous attempts could not reach out to the officials of the department of education for official quote.
