Centre's APAAR ID scheme leaves Punjab schools confused

Balwant Garg

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Faridkot, October 26

The Union Ministry of Education’s (MoE) move to introduce Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry (APAAR) and directions to all schools to obtain the consent of parents to initiate APAAR enrolment process has created confusion among schools in absence of any guidelines from the state education department.

State president of Government School Teachers Union Surinder Kumar Puari and Mohinder Singh Bhola, president, Private Unaided Schools Association, said this non-academic task would create more burden on schools in the absence of any guidelines from the Education Department.

According to an MoE letter, APAAR will give each student, enrolled from pre-primary to higher education, a unique identification number, apart from the already existing Aadhaar ID. The creation of this lifelong unique APAAR ID for every student will not only help to achieve the objective of “one nation, one student ID”, but will also help track the educational progress and achievement of a student, reads the letter.

APAAR ID will be a gateway for accessing Edulocker, allowing students to digitally store all their achievements like results, holistic report card, learning outcome, besides other achievements like ranks in Olympiad, sports and skill training. Last week, the MoE had asked the state government to direct the schools to get the consent of parents by holding special parents-teacher meetings (PTM) for three days from October 16 to 18. But in absence of any guidelines, no PTM was held.

Kamal Kishore Yadav, secretary, School Education Department, did not respond to phone calls and text messages.