Details of unrecognised private schools sought from 10 districts

Vikas Sharma

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Tribune News Service

Jammu, December 28

Taking a serious note of the rise in the number of unrecognised private educational institutions, the Directorate of School Education (DSE), Jammu, has sought details from the Chief Education Officers of all 10 districts of the Jammu division to know the exact status of these schools.

Sources said almost all districts of the Jammu division had a number of unrecognised schools but Jammu and Samba districts topped the list. They added that the process of recognition of some of the schools was under process.

Pertinently, in the Jammu division, the total number of private schools is around 3,000 with more than 1,000 primary schools, 868 middle schools, 556 high schools and 262 higher secondary schools.

“An initiative has been launched by the government to close the unrecognised schools as they lack basic facilities, like sufficient classrooms, playgrounds, library, science laboratory etc. Even a number of recognised private schools too did not have all such facilities but the authorities had not conducted any inspection,” sources claimed.

In Samba district, out of the total 216 private schools in all five zones of the district, 164 are unrecognised while 52 are recognised at the middle, high and higher secondary levels.

The Vijaypur zone in the district topped the list with 49 unrecognised schools followed by the Purmandal zone with 36 schools.

“In the Samba zone, there are 35 unrecognised schools while the Ramgarh and Ghagwal zones have 28 and 16 such schools, respectively. The Ramgarh zone has 17 recognised private schools followed by the Ghawal zone with 12 recognised private schools,” an official claimed.

“In fact, the J&K Board of School Education recently held a meeting of state affiliation committee under the chairmanship of its chairman Prof Zahoor Ahmad Chat to fix the criteria for granting recognition to private schools,” the official added.

He further said during the meeting, a total of 39 cases of educational institutes having major construction/infrastructural deficiencies were found in the Jammu division. It was also decided that those private schools which had applied for upgrade would not be allowed to run the classes.