Wani Irshad

12/04/2023

https://youtu.be/E9CNsHtivGI

Notified by JK SCERT on 10 April 2023

14/11/2022

My write up in today's Kashmir Reader on the eve of National Children's Day

https://kashmirreader.com/2022/11/14/protection-and-safeguarding-of-child-rights/

27/05/2022

https://youtu.be/HoDlwxRF3z8

09/02/2022

https://kashmirreader.com/2022/02/09/what-teachers-must-do-when-schools-re-open/

08/02/2022

Pass percentage
Govt. Schools= 74 %
Private Schools = 89%

Doesn't it reflect that Closure of Schools, due to , had least effect on the results.

Shall we take it for granted that Learning Loss hasn't been so severe?

28/01/2022

Those who are fed up by the social media trials,will find the write up interesting

://epaper.kashmirreader.net/ #

Courtesy:


for their valuable "quotes"

The damage done by social media trials

By Irshad Ahmad Wani

Social media has become an integral part of each individual’s life as it is accessible through smartphones, computers, and tablets. In a democracy it is healthy to have social media platforms to express opinions freely, but this freedom of expression when misused becomes an intrusion and a social problem. In a democratic set-up, the judiciary is supposed to safeguard the fundamentals rights of citizens and ensure no one is exploited, cheated, victimised or subjected to any kind of violence by either government authorities or someone in society. Through the principles of justice, equity and good conscience, the courts ensure fair trial and fundamental rights. It is, however, very unfortunate when some third party (other than courts) tries to play the role of judge, jury and executioner. Mainstream media had been taking up this third party role but the latest trend of social media taking it up has emerged as a serious concern. Such a trend is disrupting or influencing judicial proceedings and actions by the law enforcing agencies.
In social media trials, social media platforms allow the general public as well as reporters, media houses, online news portals, etc, to develop, change or modify public opinion and give hype and exaggeration to issues that should have been handled by designated authorities/agencies. To have more and more number of views, likes, shares, comments, and earnings thereof, social media channels/news portals flout media ethics and standards, giving publicity to issues that are either sensitive in nature or have no relevance at all. They violate people’s privacy and tarnish their character. The damage done by these media trials is sometimes irreparable.
Let’s take the example of the Jasleen Kaur situation. A woman by the name of Jasleen Kaur falsely accused Sabarjeet Singh of sexual assault in her Facebook post. This caught a lot of attention in the media and the public started to hail Jasleen as a hero. The social media wannabe judges started demonising and dehumanising Sabarjeet by calling him Dilli ka Darinda. Because of this, Singh was sacked from the job and ostracised by society. He was eventually acquitted by the court because Kaur did not attend the proceedings herself and the credibility of her post was challenged by the court. But the damage was already done. It does not change the fact that the girl’s action and the trial by social media destroyed the life of someone and people just jumped to a conclusion instead of understanding and investigating the problem.
Recently, a 30-year-old woman from Anantnag died and her paternal relatives claimed that she was murdered by her in-laws. Her in-laws refuted the claims and said that she died because of a sudden heart attack. In the meanwhile, social media channels/reporters grabbed the opportunity and began a trial of the case without letting the concerned agencies investigate the matter. Some media portals tried their level best build a particular public opinion. Some persons even accessed the wedding photographs of the deceased lady and did not hesitate to post them on social media. Syed Humayun Qaisar, ex-Director of All India Radio Srinagar, while giving his point of view on such developments in social media said, “The main issue with social media is that everybody has access and everybody has an opinion. With little or no understanding we often become judgemental on most of the content that is uploaded on social media. It will do no harm to me if I write/post anything and I will not be taken to task for writing anything that does not go against the state. I can post anything I wish to post without knowing anything about the topic which I am posting. So this becomes an issue and people do not know who I am. People on Facebook usually are faceless as concealing one’s identity is not a big deal there. There are many things that should not come to limelight but are brought to limelight. Whatever is posted, uploaded or written on Facebook is taken as gospel truth and made viral like anything. So, by taking sides, by being judgemental, we are actually harming people.”
Dr Raja Muzaffar, columnist and social activist, while commenting on the issue said, “Social media is being misused by most of the people. We indeed have freedom of expression and speech but we must take utmost care while we go through sensitive social media content. We have become judgemental especially on issues like su***de cases. Once these cases are projected without hearing the other party, the audience takes it as gospel truth and then keeps on sharing and commenting on these videos. This impacts the fair trial of the case because the investigation agencies also start looking at one side of the story.”
Mohammad Hussain Zaffar, senior broadcaster at AIR Srinagar said on this issue, “Social media is used as a loose cannon and it puts credibility of every person at stake. Social media is emerging as a destructive weapon and it is one of the easiest means of blackmailing. People seldom bother to consider the sensitivity and repercussions of the content that is posted on the portals. Some sensitive issues that otherwise should not be unwrapped are brought into the public domain, resulting in provoking mischievous elements to take advantage.”
Social media can vilify or dehumanise someone over the littlest of things. For all its talk about connecting people, social media has become the exact opposite. It is being used to divide people. In social media trials the principle of “innocent unless proven guilty” has been overridden by “guilty unless proven innocent.” Every Tom, Dick and Harry keeps plunging into the field, and public opinion becomes driven by irrationality. Law enforcing agencies including police and courts will have to deal with legal issues on one hand and tackle the opinion created by the media on the other hand.
We should understand that the manipulation game that social media plays not only harms democracy but also threatens its very existence. The need of the hour is for social media to be properly regulated, its scope of work defined, and its operations reined in.

—[email protected]

07/01/2022

Underperforming schools and fixing responsibility


Irshad Ahmad Wani
Few of the recent developments in Education Department of J&K UT give ample proof that some policy decisions are being taken with regards to the reformation and rejuvenation of the department.
The steps being taken are said to be attempts towards streamlining the system to bring it back on the track from which it has derailed. The department is said to be having failed to come up to the expectations as desired and yielding lower outcomes in terms of gross enrolment, lowering drop outs, and attracting public appreciation.
On the other hand the department is said to have a good number of employees who do not perform up to the expectations and the government intends to act tough against these employees.
The set quality indicators, no doubt, portray a dismal picture with regards to the overall performance of government schools. Failing to attract more and more enrolment rather than pleading for it by promising what public hardly believes to materialize, continuing drop outs, lower results, consistent learning crises in terms of lower performance of pass outs from government schools and underutilization of man power available are enough to prove that all is not well with this department.
All these indicators demand immediate consideration at the appropriate level so as to make this department yield as is expected. Before that consideration the responsibility of the stakeholders who have brought the department to this stage need to be recognized and fixed thereof, for preventing it from further loss.
The three main stakeholders of the department are teachers, administrative authorities and society/community. Let us consider their individual roles in bringing the department to this position and their responsibility in bringing the department back on track.
Teachers are the most important stakeholders in the department. Quality of teachers determine the quality of output from the schools and the quality of teachers is determined by the criteria rather policy of their recruitment.
If the authorities at the helm of affairs compromise with the criteria and set it as minimum as possible, they are actually doing harm to the department in particular, and to the society, in general.
In case of UT of J& K (erstwhile state of J&K) most of the teachers in the department are there by chance not by choice as the criteria set in the ReT scheme was mostly to address the universal access rather than taking into consideration the quality provisions and appointing the most qualified and skilled lot through proper policy.
Education system is the origin of good quality doctors, engineers, lawyers, businessmen, entrepreneurs, and other service professionals and as such the system needs to have the most professional and qualified persons who are there by choice rather than by chance.
The recruitment policy and criteria for the profession of teachers should have been very rigorous involving due level of competition among the aspirants so that only the cream of the society get the job of teaching.
In establishment of indiscriminate number of schools and upgrading existing ones, by mostly flouting the set norms, besides framing the crooked recruitment policy the teachers appointed seldom had any say. Teachers were at the receiving end in both the cases but for the flaws that crept in from time-to-time teachers are made to bear the brunt.
They are being blamed for everything that is not good within the department. Taking it rationally, in few of the cases teachers appointed under ReT scheme and through Recruitment Board, taking the advantage of job security, less accountability and nepotism took their job for granted and rarely bothered to deliver as was expected from them.
But on the other hand, it is only the teachers who managed to increase the literacy rate from 55.52 percent in 2001 to 77.3 percent in 2020 in J&K, besides making schooling possible in far flung and inaccessible areas. The teachers, in general, giving their sweat and blood for the cause were left handicapped in transforming the system when taking into consideration the other parameters that should have been there in place. Had teachers been the only stakeholders in the system, holding them wholly responsible for all the bad things in the department would have been justified.
Second to teachers, authorities/administrative officers at the helm of affairs are responsible for all the good and bad in the department. Establishing new schools, upgrading existing ones and deciding feasibility thereof, furnishing adequate number of teachers to the schools, providing accommodation and other facilities, deciding curriculum, setting academic calendar, ensuring provision for recreational, co-curricular and sports facilities, deciding examination and promotion policy, are what government looks after besides giving registration and affiliation to government aided and un-aided (private) schools.
For past two decades, in erstwhile state of J&K (now UT) we have witnessed extensive establishment of new schools, upgradation of already existing ones, mushroom growth of private schools. The newly opened primary schools were either housed in rented rooms or given three room buildings, wherever land for the purpose was available.
In most of the cases there was least rather no provision for one classroom for each grade and accommodating 5 to 6 classes in one or two rooms was nothing less than torment for the teachers working there.
In comparison to private schools, government schools lacked subjects like Computer, General Knowledge, fine arts, Religious studies (Islamiyat etc) what to talk of recreational and sports facilities.
Government schools have been experimenting with KG classes for past few years when private schools have always been considering the same classes as their first priority. In all these matters teachers have never been at the deciding end and the faults, if any, in these areas have been detrimental in lowering the enrolment in government schools and forcing people to prefer private schools for their wards.
As per reports government is going to merge 2000 schools to increase pupil teacher ratio (PTR) and owing to less than 10, 30, and 70 number of students in these Primary, Middle and High schools respectively. This is going to be the second exercise in this direction as 4000 schools were clubbed in 2015 and 2016 in the state of J&K and out of these 4000 schools 1834 were housed in rented buildings.
Enrolment in the individual clubbed schools declined over the passage of time as the teachers spared in these schools were made to work in nearby/other schools. Fixing responsibility of low enrolment in these schools on these teachers lacks rationality.
Instead of resorting to this merging and clubbing time and again the government should focus on rejuvenating and reforming the entire department by taking into consideration all the contributing factors as has been done by Delhi government.
Besides free education government has been providing Mid Day Meals (MDM), free textbooks, free uniforms, scholarships etc. All these facilities can attract students from middle or poor class families to the government schools but can hardly ensure the quality education that should have been given the top most priority.
Owning the share of responsibility in this case on part of the government and coming up with the reformative policy is the need of hour and in the same process teachers should be blamed only to the extent that is justified on account of their irresponsibility, if any.
After teachers and government, role of society viz-a-viz downfall of the government schools cannot be underestimated or neglected. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) had envisaged the concept of community ownership of the government schools wherein the community along with the teachers was supposed to strive for the upliftment of the schools and consider the same as their assets.
Since affluent class of the society prefer better quality private schools for their wards, most of the middle-class families follow the fray and the government schools are left with a lot that mostly could not afford to the private schools and are first generation learners.
Community ownership of the government schools cannot be achieved unless and until these schools do not give due competition to the private schools that otherwise take a major chunk of the admissions.
In this context asking government teachers to admit their wards in the government schools for depicting the trust that is desired to be on these schools, makes no sense because he/she, although longing to see government schools to be ahead of the private schools, can hardly make any difference unless and until government and society do not play their part in providing the other facilities and giving the ownership respectively.
On conclusion it can be said that government including teachers and society should put their heads together and make a commitment to regain the lost glamour of the government schools and ensure their quality of such a standard that need to merger or club them does not arise time and again.
(The author can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed are his own)

13/12/2021

Awaam ki Awaaz | Irshad from Khag receives praise from LG Sinha for suggesting educational reforms

Jammu: In response to the recommendations submitted to the Lieutenant Governor (LG) Manoj Sinha and consideration of the same by him in the monthly Programme “Awaam ki Awaaz” aired on November 21, Irshad Wani from Khag, Budgam puts his gratitude for the same.

11/12/2021

An alarming situation.

While assessing the competency and learning levels of students, not lesser than secondary level, in a particular subject one feels no difficulty in judging that the situation is very alarming.

When you are supposed to be contented with asking how many letters are there in English Alphabet, how many among them are vowels, not to talk of higher order competencies like parts of speech, tenses, narration etc., you have enough reasons to call the situation as nothing less than Alarming.

Extraordinary steps are needed to be taken to SAVE THE GENERATION

01/12/2021

Education Reformation: The prerequisites thereof
As envisaged in the NEP 2020, the teachers should be subjected to continuous professional development so as to ensure competency based teaching and learning process rather than content or rote memory based teaching-learning
Posted on Dec 01, 2021 | Author IRSHAD AHMAD WANI

The education department of J&K Union Territory has been in limelight for the past couple of weeks. The special enrolment drives, Hon’ble Lieutenant Governor’s statement of merging more 2000 schools, The Principal Secretary education B.K Singh’s announcement that schools should have at least 15 students to remain functional give ample proofs that reformation of school education in terms of total enrolment, pupil teacher ratio and quality provisions is at the anvil. In the same context this author feels it worthwhile to put forward following few suggestions for consideration at the appropriate level:

(1) The Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) 2019-20 had depicted a grim picture of the school education department in terms of Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) and availability of facilities for students in government schools across J&K. Against set norms of 30:1, 35:1 and 40:1 government schools have 15:1, 8:1 and 12:1 PTR in Primary, Upper Primary and Secondary Schools respectively. This grim picture of disproportionality coupled with set norm of only 2 teachers for Primary Schools and 6 teachers for Middle schools demands complete overhauling so that on the one hand PTR is increased and on the other hand minimum 4-5 and 8-10 teachers are provided for Primary and Middle schools respectively. For this end the department need take three fold steps:

· Rationalization: Rationalise the teachers on the basis of enrolment with special focus on transferring the teachers along with post to the schools with comparatively higher enrolment.

· Merging: Wherever feasible and possible, merge the schools having low enrolment, low PTR and insufficient infrastructure and accommodation, and shift the surplus teachers to the schools where merging is not possible. The merging should be along with the establishment, sanctioned posts and infrastructure so as to have one individual school from the merged schools. This may on one hand spare the extra teachers for posting at needy places and on the other hand ensure maximum utilization of the resources.

· Do away with the process of clubbing the schools. Currently in J&K UT 4133 schools are clubbed together. In clubbing, schools are made to work together but retain their individual identity by maintaining the separate records. This not only wastes the man power resources available but also casts a shadow on the efficiency of the system. In enrolment drives for example, teachers apparently from the same school have been witnessed to play tug of war over the new admissions. To grab the share of admission for the sake of record keeping and maintaining their individuality the teachers from the so called clubbed schools had to compete within themselves to grab the share of admissions. Let this clubbing be quashed and the clubbed schools be formally merged together completely keeping in view the staff and infrastructure strength as suggested above. This may result in collective effort vis-à-vis development of the school.

(2) In prevailing system and as per SSA norms, we have 3 rooms for a Primary school and not more than six rooms for a Middle school. In this system teachers are made to club the classes and the same, on one hand, results in compromising with the learning outcomes set for a particular grade and on the other hand leaves the other teachers to sit idle. Let there be one classroom for each grade besides an office room. This demands minimum 7 classrooms for a primary school and 9 classrooms for a middle school. To have efficient use of the land, available or acquired, for constructing new buildings let there be provision of 2 to 3 storey buildings with the facility of ramps to make them barrier free for CWSN. Pooling the resources through merging can have least extra burden on state exchequer in this regard.

(3) Teachers, being the most crucial part of the system, need to be made vibrant and should have sufficient degree of competition among themselves. In this regard, it is proposed to have departmental examination and on the basis of merit obtained in the same, the teachers should be accordingly incentivized in terms of promotions, placements and rewards. To avoid home sickness and boredom teachers should necessarily be transferred at least after 2 years, if not earlier. Primary school teaching, being most crucial should have teachers who are specially trained, more skilful and competent. For the same purpose the accomplishments of primary school teachers should be specially incentivized, rewarded and endorsed.

(4) As envisaged in the NEP 2020, the teachers should be subjected to continuous professional development so as to ensure competency based teaching and learning process rather than content or rote memory based teaching learning. To this end, trainings workshops and orientation courses should be conducted in a time bound manner. Besides that, there should be a provision of exposing teachers to the teaching and learning culture in in the reputed schools in other parts of the country.

(5) Since the department is facing dearth of subject specific teachers and lecturers at secondary and higher secondary level respectively. The practice of engaging contractual, adhoc and academic arrangement staff for the same has proven to be a failure because the engaged staff lacked accountability and the requisite experience. Now the department has started using the practice of utilization of services of teachers working in schools in these High and Higher Secondary schools. Let the department come up with a strategy and streamline this system of using the services of teachers on ‘need based pattern’. Instead of pick and choose practice for these posts let the department go for a separate qualifying examination of the interested subject specific in-service teachers and on the basis of merit obtained post the teachers in these schools.

(6) To make learning environment attractive, the schools should be face lifted and provided with playgrounds, recreational facilities, tinkering labs, drinking water and toilet facilities.

(7) Community ownership of government schools plays a vital role in ensuring quality education in the same. The ownership can hardly be expected if the schools fail to compete with the locally available private schools. For that very purpose the authorities at the helm of affairs need to take all the steps for ensuring quality provisions in the government schools so that the general public is attracted to admit their wards in these schools. Trust building on government schools is one of the prerequisite that can ensure community ownership of the schools. Community ownership, when achieved, will in itself motivate and mobilize people to prefer government for their wards.

The reformation process that the authorities at the helm of affairs have envisaged need to be taken seriously by all the stake holders including parents,teachers and administrative officers to achieve the desired results.



(The Author is Teacher by profession and is a Columnist. He can be reached on: [email protected])

11/11/2021

Securing a seat in government Medical or Engineering College is considered a great feat in our society but admission of a child in a government school a sign of poverty and backwardness.

MBBS in government College a sign of superiority but schooling in a government school a sign of inferiority.

Is it our mental make up or the quality difference that needs to be addressed Multidimensionally so as to attract students to the government schools rather than pleading general public to trust, what they normally consider has nothing special to offer.

Enrollment drive needs to be taken vigorously by all the stakeholders.