SRINAGAR: The School Education Department has said that in the past five years student enrolment in government-run schools has increased by over 17 percent.
The official documents reveal that prior to 2019 there were a total of 12,37,000 students enrolled in government-run-schools of Jammu and Kashmir.
However, it also states that in the past five years the student enrolment has increased by 17.7 percent. “Till academic year 2023-24, around 14,18,000 students were enrolled in government-run-schools.”
Pertinently, in 2023 a local news agency reported that the count of overall public schools in Jammu and Kashmir have reduced by nearly 19 percent owing to the ‘zero or low enrollment of students in government schools’.
The officials of the department had said, “We had some government schools wherein the student enrollment was very low or even some with less than five. We had merged them with the nearby government schools.”
It also said that such schools were being reflected on UDISE as separate schools. “Earlier we used to have 23,117 government schools as per UDISE but in the updated database, we have only 18,820 schools.”
“We had nearly 4300 government schools wherein the student enrollment was less than five or zero,” the official said adding that as of now there was no such government school with zero enrollments.
The School Education Department in the previous year said that it had identified more than 1200 such government schools that were having low enrollment of students.
It had said that such schools would likely be merged in accordance to the catchment and feasibility of the students.
In April-2022, School Education Department had said that it was all set to merge hundreds of government-run-schools of Jammu and Kashmir having an inadequate student enrollment.(KNO)
