J&K to have SCERT on national pattern

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, August 29

The Administrative Council (AC), which met under the chairmanship of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, approved the establishment of the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) by merging state institutes of education in Jammu and Kashmir, an official spokesman said.

SCERT, being the apex academic authority of the UT, is mandated to assist and advise the government in implementation of policies and programmes for human resource development in the field of education, human and child development and national integration, on the analogy of NCERT — the national apex academic authority.

The decision to establish a new body includes revisiting various policy parameters concerning teachers’ education to create a sound institutional infrastructure for both pre-service and in-service training of teachers and for academic resource support to elementary/secondary schools.

The new body is envisaged to meet the challenges in teachers’ education arising from recent spatial and numerical expansion of schooling facilities at elementary and secondary levels along with corresponding skill enhancement of teachers through proper orientation and training, the spokesman said.

SCERT will enable the Department of School Education to train 1.34 lakh in-service teachers through various professional trainings, capacity building programmes, induction courses, contentment enrichment and contemporary trends and techniques for ensuring quality education.

To provide academic and resource support at grassroots level, SCERT will function through existing District Institute of Education and Training (DIET), which has been brought under the administrative control of the former. To make SCERT operational, the Administrative Council assigned the charge to the Chairperson of the Board of School Education (JKBOSE) as an interim measure.

The AC also approved development and implementation of online management, monitoring and accounting system for public works (R&B) Department through Centre for development of advance computing (C-DAC) under the oversight of J&K e-Governance Agency (JaKeGA), Information Technology Department.