Tourism, disaster mgmt among 11 new subjects to be introduced at sr sec level

Arteev Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, September 22

The Jammu and Kashmir Government has decided to introduce 11 new subjects, including business administration, rural development, disaster management and mass communications, at the senior secondary level to keep abreast the students of the Union Territory with the latest developments around the world.

The NCERT and CBSE are not offering business administration, rural development, mass communications and fisheries at the senior secondary level.

For introducing new subjects, the UT School Education Department will have to arrange at least 638 posts of teachers —266 in Kashmir and 372 in the Jammu region.

Apart from the proposal of introducing new subjects, the Directorates of School Education, Kashmir and Jammu, have sought creation of additional 2,277 posts — 1,959 in Kashmir and 318 in the Jammu region — in the already introduced subjects.

“A total of 2,915 posts (including 638 for proposed new subjects) are required to be filled on the ad hoc basis for various subjects. 2,225 posts are required to be filled in Kashmir and 690 in the Jammu region. The proposal for the Kashmir division is on the higher side, which may be seen please,” the proposal said.

Importantly, tourism, the backbone of the J&K economy, is also being introduced as one of the new subjects at the senior secondary level.

“Out of 11 new subjects, there are at least seven subjects being introduced only in Kashmir, including tourism, gender sanitisation, social work, disaster management, rural development, library sciences and bio-resources, while two subjects bio-chemistry and fine arts (music & painting) would be introduced in the Jammu division only,” according to the government’s proposal.

“The content for introducing business administration, rural development, fisheries and mass communications needs to be developed and for this reputed experts, teachers and academicians need to be involved at an earliest for which the school education and this organisation needs to work in tandem for the content and syllabi development,” the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (JKBOSE) said in its Action Taken Report (ATR).

At present, the JKBOSE is offering 52 subjects at the senior secondary level, apart from vocational subjects. The proposal also suggested that heritage crafts, graphic design, creative writing and translation, fine arts, engineering graphics, artificial intelligence and legal studies can be introduced at the senior secondary level in J&K as are being offered by the NCERT and CBSE.