The Government is going to project the State’s heritage schools as centres of excellence in education with multifaceted activities.The idea is to revive the time-tested excellence of these institutions and attract maximum enrollment of students by offering best educational facilities in the form of highly proficient faculty and modern teaching infrastructure.The revival plan envisages slew of structural and administrative reforms directed towards best usage of the infrastructure and tools of modern education available in the form of smart classrooms, computer labs, well established laboratories for different streams, libraries having collection of rare books and above all experienced and expert faculty on all subjects.Rolling out the innovative plan, here at meeting convened to review the performance of heritage Ranbir Higher Secondary School, Minister for Education, Naeem Akhtar underlined the need for using electronics, print and social media to give wide publicity to the idea.Director School Education, Jammu and senior faculty members of the school were present in the meeting.The Ranbir Higher Secondary School Jammu, which already has a website and runs a Facebook page, was asked to use the social media to project the achievements and facilities to enhance enrollment.
The Minister also directed Director School Education Jammu to make a promo (short documentary) on high-end facilities and huge building infrastructure of the school and show it on TV channels. “Publicity is must to compete with the private schools. Once done people will come to know that SPRM has far better facilities than any other school in the city,” the minister asserted.Stressing on revival of its popularity, the Minister said this school has produced towering personalities and people who have achieved outstanding feat in different fields.It was informed that the school has preserved its records from early twentieth century even though it has been established in 1878. The Minister called for scientific preservation of the records and asked director school education Jammu to consult Archives Department and take its help in this regard. The Minister also inspected old registers containing records of results and admission. He said this can help the school to find out the alumni of the school and persuade them to contribute in the projection of the school.
It was also decided to that the school would host a mega alumni meet and invite outstanding alumnus to interact with the school students and civil society which would also help in projecting the image of the school as the centre of par excellence.
Asserting that the huge building and educational infrastructure shall be put to best use, the Minister asked them to start community learning by offering IT courses at its highly advanced computer lab after routine school timing. In this regard he asked the directorate of school education to explore the possibility of approving a certificate course for the school from DOEEC. He said by this way the school would also be able to generate revenue besides providing opportunities to the people who want to hone their computer skills.The School already runs a kindergarten having state of art facilities for pre- school and nursery education like audio visual projectors and well decorated classrooms for attraction of kids.The Minister asked the school management and director school education to take steps to upgrade it and include more diversified activities. (KNS)