Re-scheduled academic calendars by DSEK proved a dampener
Srinagar: Bellying the tall claims of increasing the number of working day in schools, the Directorate of School Education Kashmir (DSEK) failed to implement the re-scheduled academic calendar which was aimed to compensate the academic losses in Kashmir during the academic year 2017-18.
The new academic calendar was announced by school education department in May this year in order to avoid the loss in academics faced in wake of shutdowns and other law and order situations.
As per the new academic calendar, the next holiday after the strike day was to deemed as the working day to compensate loss of academics but the department failed to maintain the sanctity of the calendar.
“No district adhered to orders of directorate and the academic calendar, but instead started taking zero and extra classes to compensate the loss,” an official said.
According to students, the teachers in concerned schools forced zero classes on them.
“We had no problem with academic calendar but the zero classes in the morning were disturbing the timetable of routine classes,” a student from Budgam said.
Rather than utilizing the holidays to compensate for academic losses, many schools skipped assembly, morning prayers to fill the gap.
Students said they were unable to reach school in the morning for zero classes due to non-availability of transport facility for them. “We had to travel four to five Kilometer of distance to reach our schools,” a student said.
During the academic years 2017-18, 35-40 working days were recorded from May to June in most of the south Kashmir districts.
In Shopian district, the work of the schools was hit for more than 25 days up to July ending while as 25 days of academic work in many schools of south Kashmir’s Shopian was affected.
The DSEK was supposed to keep the schools open on the subsequent holidays after any loss of academic activity but DSEK has failed and is yet to implement the proposal despite the students having lost almost more than 50 percent of study time.
“The department waits for the top brasses to inaugurate academic calendar, which has affected the students adversely in the last academic session.
DSEK G N Itoo when contacted said they have completed the whole exercise.
“We tried to implement the academic calendar up to 70 to 80 percent but couldn’t utilize gazetted holidays. For this we have to seek permission from General Admission Department,” he said.
On the other hand the Private schools utilized all the Sundays as working days in schools to compensate the academic losses of students in the last academic session.
KV Correspondent
