Minister for Education, Naeem Akhtar has said that the Government Schools need to redouble their efforts to ensure better results, adding that the focus has to be the students.The Minister was speaking at a meeting to review the performance of the education sector in Kashmir division.Commissioner Secretary School Education, Director School Education Kashmir, Director RMSA, Joint Director School Education Kashmir, CEOs of Kashmir Division, Headmasters and other officers were also present in the meeting.Referring to recently declared results and poor performance of certain Government Schools, the Minister said that the teachers need to put in their best efforts to ensure better results from this session.
The Minister said that the Headmasters of all the schools with pass percentage less than 20% in the recently declared results will be closely monitored and judged on their performance in this session. He further added that poor performance by any such school from here on, will lead to strict action against the Headmaster, while as better performing ones will be equally rewarded.The Minister asked Director School Education to ensure that Headmasters also teach certain subjects themselves, and even take extra classes, focusing more on better performing children so as to improve the results. In case of schools located at far off places, the Headmaster in order to deliver better should be based in the same village or town, he added.Reiterating that Education must be the focus of attention, the Minister said it is more important to have better student-teacher relationship and sustained teacher motivation, meanwhile school building and other infrastructural facilities shall be taken care of. He asked the teachers to put in their best to bring back the glory to their profession and have a sense of pride by performing well and contributing to the society.
Referring to the rationalisation of pupil-teacher ratio in schools, the Minister said equitable and rational distribution of teachers in terms of numbers, experience and qualification is vital to the achievement of quality education at the basic level, adding that measures like amalgamation of certain schools would also be taken to achieve the purpose.It was also decided in the meeting that a tracking system for the schools, from where students migrate during winter months should be developed, so that they could be tracked to the places they migrate to and accommodated in schools there.Urging the CEOs to redouble their efforts to improve the standard of education, Akhtar stressed the need for coordinated approach to achieve better results and directed optimum use of resources by rationalizing the staff strength as per the actual requirement. He also asked them to personally visit the schools to ascertain issues regarding under construction buildings and to carry out academic audit of all such schools that have not been performing well. During the meeting issues related to accommodation available to schools was also discussed. The Minister asked Director RMSA to personally visit such schools where buildings are being constructed under RMSA and help facilitate their early completion.