Reopening of educational institutions in J&K: Challenges and opportunities

As the situation improved and the increased risk of COVID-19 transmission lessened, the government of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir ordered reopening of all educational institutions in a phased manner. This welcome decision marked the end of what can be reasonably described as one of the longest shutdowns of educational institutions in the world, spanning two and a half years with only sparse interruptions. In his declaration regarding the guidelines for the reopening of the educational institutions in the UT, Chief Secretary A K Mehta announced that the academic session 2022-23 will be the year of educational transformation for Jammu and Kashmir. This is an opportune moment to evaluate the condition of the education system of the UT. In J&K, the education system and the millions of students dependent on it have been suffering due to a number of factors for decades and this suffering has been magnified manifold by the unprecedented catastrophe brought about by the double-lockdown. Both the long-term and the short-term damages to the UT’s education sector must be taken into account if the transformation promised by the UT administration is to truly mend and improve the lives of the students who are the future of Jammu and Kashmir.   

In an interview, renowned educationist Prof. A. G. Madhosh stated that the education scenario in Jammu and Kashmir is ‘really endangered.’ The sheer weight this statement carries is hammered home in an examination of the numerous problems that plague the region’s education sector. While a number of issues have slowly crippled the education sector of the region for decades, the problems brought about by the two and a half year long shutdown of educational institutions delivered a crushing blow to the already damaged sector, affecting the well-being of all stakeholders. A detailed discussion of both the long-term and the short-term factors and mindfulness towards all the stakeholders in the UT’s education sector should take place to fully understand the nature and extent of the damage that has been done and figure out strategies to address it. It should be kept in mind that most of these issues are interrelated and cannot be seen in isolation to one another.

Long-term issues

Problems in the education sector have been constant in Jammu and Kashmir. While the erstwhile state has shared some of its issues with the country’s education sector at large, it is undeniable that some of the problems it faces are unique to the region and place its student community at a comparative disadvantage compared to the rest of the country and the world.

1. Conflict and education

Since 1947, Jammu and Kashmir has been a region subjected to instability and conflict, making the lives of its inhabitants difficult and undoubtedly affecting its burgeoning education sector. These tensions, however, exploded during the 1989-90 insurgency which, among other things, led to a mass closure of schools and higher educational institutions. This was an era characterized by violence, disruption and struggle for normalcy. According to a study by IndiaSpend, the erstwhile state lost as many as 207 working days in 1990, 112 working days in 2010 and 130 working days in 2016. Between 2016 and 2017, just 80 days of schooling could take place as opposed to the estimated goal of 197 days. The shadow of violence has affected the lives of each and every student in the region in a number of ways which will be discussed in detail below.

2. Time crunch, rote learning and inhibited development

Educational institutions are not just places of knowledge dissemination and consumption; they should be the essential social spaces where young people learn to function in society in a safe manner by participating in debates, discussions, quizzes, cultural events; where they form meaningful friendships; where they learn moral and social values and emerge as healthy and productive individuals who contribute to society. Frequent interruptions to continuous schooling due to the conflicts greatly disrupt this development among students. As school authorities are forced to rush towards the completion of the syllabus in whatever little time they have, the issue of holistic development is often inadvertently left to the wayside. The school becomes a place for cramming information into desperate students to help them to pass their exams. There have been times when even this basic expectation could not be met: in 2016, the government had to resort to mass promotions of students of classes 8, 9 and 11 without any evaluation. This process was repeated in 2019 and 2020 (albeit the latter being due to the pandemic-induced lockdown and could be seen across the rest of the country). 

Rote learning or memorizing by repetition is something that the students end up resorting to as a partial consequence of the frequently interrupted academic calendar, but this is also a residue of the colonial or colonial-inspired education system that India at large has inherited and so far has failed to shake off completely. Overall, the deformed experience of education that students are subjected to reduces education to a process of cramming and passing examinations which greatly inhibit the students’ mental development.

3. Discrimination

In an ideal society, educational institutions should act as great equalizers, sensitive to the problems of students belonging to different strata of society and even in some cases providing them with individual attention, focusing on their individual problems and necessities. In a conflict-ridden society such as J&K, however, where educational institutions struggle to function properly, discrimination among students along various lines, especially that of gender and economic condition, becomes evident. 

While the overall literacy rate of Jammu and Kashmir according to Census 2011 is 67.16%, there is a wide gender gap between men and women – 76.75% and 56.43% respectively. There are a plethora of issues concerning women’s education in Jammu and Kashmir, discussing all of which in detail is beyond the scope of this commentary. The most problematic issue, perhaps, in J&K, is the persistence of the decades-long conflict which convinces scared parents to refrain from sending their daughters to schools out of concern for their safety. To this can be added a traditionalist view of gender roles (an issue that is seen across India), lack of awareness about the importance of women as equal contributors and stakeholders in society, lack of infrastructure like girls-only schools and higher educational institutions and an efficient transportation system. While many women are technically literate, there are numerous cases where they are pulled out of their schools in primary or secondary level, rendering them ineligible for the majority of decent job opportunities which in turn contributes to the massive problem of women’s unemployment in the UT. 

Poverty becomes even more of a curse for students when government-aided schools with a comparatively lower cost of education fail to function properly. In J&K, the chief reason for this dysfunction is the conflict, as mentioned above. However, it is evident that the government schools in the UT are in a worse position than its private schools regarding infrastructure, with at least 18000 of the around 23000 government schools being in a dilapidated condition. Many of the UT’s poor cannot afford to send their children to private schools. For many others, private tuitions or coaching centers which in a place like J&K serve as a go-to alternative to the frequently-closing schools are also unaffordable. Many of the region’s poorest are also uneducated, meaning that children from these families who cannot attend schools due to a number of reasons cannot even access the guidance of their parents, an informal solution that children born to educated parents often opt for and benefit from. 

Apart from gender and financial security, there are also a number of other dimensions of discrimination in education which should be studied in detail in order to appreciate the extent, spread and intensity of inequality in the region.

4. Lack of funds

Like the rest of India, J&K’s education sector suffers from a lack of funds. According to Naseer Ahmad Bhat, after 1948 only 7% of the total budget in J&K was allocated to the education sector. After that, the budgetary allocations have increased very slowly, reaching 11% of the total budget in 2018-19. Shortage of funds undoubtedly inhibits educational infrastructure development.

5. Lack of proper infrastructure

As mentioned before, it is estimated that at least 18000 of the region’s around 23000 government schools are in a dilapidated condition, suffering from a lack of toilets, clean classrooms, electricity and drinking water. The inability of these schools to provide the basic necessities to its students and staff should be a matter of immediate concern.

6. Low-quality teacher education system

M.Y. Ganai (2016) and Rayees Ahmad Dar (2019) point out that with the establishment of primary and secondary schools across J&K, there has been a mushrooming of private teacher training institutes across the erstwhile state. Consequently, the number of trained teachers has also increased considerably. However, the uncontrolled expansion of these institutes has resulted in a lack of quality in terms of infrastructure (labs, ICT and libraries), teacher educators and uniformity of curriculum. Most of these institutes are not funded well and are less receptive towards new developments in the realm of teacher training. As a result, the ‘trained’ teachers that these institutes produce lack the life skills, emotional skills, techno-pedagogic skills and info-savvy skills that are the need of the hour in a constantly changing education sector. A prevailing problem not only in J&K but across India is that the future teachers who opt for these training courses often do so as a last resort towards gainful employment and lack motivation towards the profession that they are training to enter into.

7. Corruption

Khursheed Nabi (2020) points to the avenues through which corruption plagues the education sector. As private schools form an integral part of J&K’s education sector, the sactioning of these schools can be a major avenue of bribery. Bribery also affects individual schools in both admission and assessment processes as affluent parents can bribe their way into ensuring that their children are admitted into the best schools and get good grades despite of poor performance. Meritorious but poor students are sometimes removed from the list of those admitted to make room for the otherwise incompetent students belonging to affluent families. The same process happens in teacher recruitment, which may lead to incompetent teachers lowering the quality of daily education. Favoritism and groupism affect the student community and teacher-student relations. Dishonest diversion of funds allocated for the improvement of the educational institutions’ infrastructure to fill the personal coffers of government servants and other key stakeholders involved in the management of said institutions and funds is a major factor that can cripple the sector.

8. Higher education

Pranav Kumar Anand and Yasar Mehmood (2020) opine that the higher education of Jammu and Kashmir is fraught with difficulties to the extent that it convinces a sizable section of the UT’s young population seeking higher education to apply to institutions in other areas of India. The teacher recruitment process in colleges and universities is accompanied by corruption as those related to or near or dear to those positions of power are often offered jobs bypassing deserving candidates. Many of the higher educational institutions do not offer research degrees like M. Phil or PhD. Admission processes to colleges and universities are also sometimes corrupt. The institutions lack proper computer facilities and other ICT tools. 

Apart from the above-mentioned major problems, many other problems also plague the education sector of J&K which include teacher-student ratio, psychological damage and trauma due to the conflict and violence and problems regarding the widespread consumption of narcotics and other harmful substances by students.

The ‘double-lockdown’ and crisis in the education sector

According to a United Nations report, India after Uganda is experiencing the world’s longest closure of educational institutions due to the pandemic- around 82 weeks in total which has undoubtedly left significant scars in the education sector of the nation in general. However, Jammu and Kashmir was subjected to what is dubbed a ‘double lockdown’ which has left various sectors of the region, including the education sector, utterly devastated. This long spell began in August, 2019 with the abrogation of Article 370 and the conversion of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories which was accompanied by a complete communications blockade and lockdown issued by the government in order to ensure peace and stability in the troubled region undergoing a fundamental transition. This meant the beginning of lockdown for J&K around six months before the rest of India experienced it. 

The most significant difference that characterizes the lockdowns imposed in J&K from that of the rest of the country, apart from the difference in duration, was the long restriction imposed on the usage of the internet. J&K has been one of the chief areas subject to internet blockages due to a number of reasons. An article published in October 2021 by The Wire, of the 548 internet shutdowns recorded in India since 2012, 317 were in Jammu and Kashmir. August, 2019 saw the beginning of a long restriction on the internet, with a complete blockage being imposed through the first five months of the lockdown and only 2G connection being provided afterwards. While this was done due to security reasons, the internet blockage spelled doom for the educational institutions as schools, colleges, universities and coaching centers in the region could not even partially compensate for the lockdown by transitioning to the online mode of education as the rest of India did following the imposition of the pandemic-driven lockdown there. Efforts to do so with 2G connection meant for viewing static websites led to nothing as online classes were a horribly troublesome affair with neither the teachers nor the students being able to effectively communicate with one another, sending virtual educational materials becoming a chore as uploading and downloading files that would have taken seconds to hours and online exams becoming near impossible to conduct. As a result, students in the region were affected far worse than their counterparts anywhere else in the country. It is, perhaps, safe to assume that students in J&K suffered the loss of two and a half years worth of academic growth in a far more complete way than the partial loss suffered by students in the rest of the country who can at least access online education.

The pandemic-induced economic standstill led to businesses being closed down and countless people losing their jobs across the world and J&K is no exception. As parents are unable to pay the exorbitant education fees charged by the private schools due to economic losses, the amount due piles up and the future of their children’s education is severely threatened. On the other hand, as G. N. Var, the President of the Private Schools Association of J&K (PSAJK) has pointed out, private schools across the Valley have been facing severe financial stress due to transportation costs, the inability to rent out the school buildings as sites for coaching centers and the government’s decision to ban the private schools from charging admission fees for any new student since 2021. This stress has led many private schools to close their doors and, according to him, will severely inhibit the private schools’ capability to provide good-quality education to their students. Var has rightly stated that around 65000 people associated professionally with private schools are threatened as far as their livelihoods are concerned, as well as the education of the schools’ 650,000 or so students’ education. The same can be said for the professionals associated with government schools. 

The pandemic-induced lockdown is sure to increase educational disparity across various lines across the world and J&K, where such discrimination is already rampant, is no exception. The existing discrimination across gender lines as increased economic desperation may lead girls’ education to be the earlier casualty. Moreover, as students are unable to access educational institutions, educated and affluent parents are usually able to mobilize their educational and/or financial resources to navigate the problem of their children’s education much more easily than their poor and relatively less-educated counterparts can. 

Child and adolescent mental health therapist Wasim Kakroo opines that psychological issues could become a cause of concern among children in a post-pandemic offline educational scenario and this may vary across age groups. The young children who were stuck at home due to the pandemic at an early age may face the most problem in reorienting their lifestyle with an offline education as they have already gotten used to screens, hence, they may exhibit behavioral issues. Adolescents may also exhibit problems adjusting to the offline reality. Bunking classes, Kakroo points out, may become a matter of major concern.

Government initiatives

Understanding the complexity of the process, the UT administration has opted for a phased reopening of the educational institutions. It has been declared that the classes 9th to 12th will resume in Summer Zone of the UT on 14th February, with the classes of the lower standards resuming from 21st February. All classes of the schools in the Winter Zone are set to resume from 28th February, after the Winter break is over. Chief Secretary A K Mehta also issued guidelines for the functioning of these institutions, stating that Covid-appropriate behavior (CAB) and SOP guidelines will be of the utmost importance in the daily functioning of the institutions. The heads of the institutions will be held personally responsible for the health and cleanliness of the institutions.

Recommendations

The education sector of Jammu and Kashmir, impacted by decades of mismanagement, neglect and conflict, has been devastated by the pandemic. While the administration is taking swift measures to ensure that the reopening of the educational institutions goes smoothly without provoking a new wave of Covid cases which should indeed be the first priority, the problems plaguing the education scenario are complex and interrelated and a number of strategies should be adopted in order to move towards proper recovery.

1. A strategy should be developed to assess the loss of students in terms of their academic qualifications as opposed to the standards they are promoted to. Based on the results of such an assessment, remedial courses meant for students to catch up to their academic loss should be developed by the government. 
2. A system should be introduced to bring back to school those students who may have dropped out of them during the lockdown due to various reasons.
3. Private schools are important stakeholders in the education sector of Jammu and Kashmir and have been badly damaged due to the financial losses brought about by the lockdown. In view of this, the administration should financially assist deserving private schools to re-establish themselves. Schools that have closed their business during the pandemic should be given priority in this process, along with the quality of education which was provided before the pandemic.
4. As a part of the promised educational transformation, the government schools should be reformed in terms of infrastructure and quality of the faculty because a significant part of the region’s poor cannot afford to send their children to private schools. The target should be to establish a quality of education in government schools which would be on par with the best private schools. 
5. The UT administration must find a way to navigate around the loss of time in the educational institutions due to frequent and irregular closures of the physical campuses. This has to be an area of major concern as the frequent disruptions in the regular teaching-learning process negatively affects the students in a variety of different ways. As long as internet blockages are a reality of J&K, online teaching is not an alternative to fall back on, which the experience of the double lockdown has already shown. As far as the dissemination of knowledge is concerned, the television and the radio should be developed into mediums rivaling schools. The syllabi of every class, every stream and every level of education should ideally be covered through these media outlets with the help of experienced and trained teachers. In this way, although television and radio can never truly compensate for the space that educational institutions offer in terms of social, emotional, physical and intellectual growth, they can emerge as a viable alternative to online classes across the UT.
6. In view of the psychological damage that the conflict and the recent pandemic has wrought upon the students, competent counselors should be employed in every school, college and university in order to properly address the emotional and psychological needs of the students. Their services should be made available through phone calls in order to compensate for physical closures of campuses.
7. The teacher training system in J&K has to be subjected to a major transformation in a qualitative sense. The curricula should be redrawn and made more uniform across the UT with a special emphasis on developing practicable skills in the teachers appropriate for 21st century education rather than simple theoretical knowledge. The practical part of the teacher training courses should be emphasized and to this end demonstration schools may be established near the teacher training institutes.
8. Corruption in the education sector is a complex, varied and multi-layered problem. A detailed investigation must be conducted by teams of competent professionals both within and outside the sector and a carefully drawn out multifaceted strategy should be employed to weed out the corruption. 
9. A transformation in terms of the content of primary, secondary and higher education across India is long overdue, J&K being no exception. In a 21st century reality where the internet has made access to knowledge easier than ever before, education has to become a way to impart skills with which students can productively use the knowledge that they have gained, rather than a medium of imparting knowledge which the students will be able to access anyway. In this new reality, the role of the teacher also has to go through a revolutionary change. 
10. Given the troubles of transportation across the region, establishing micro-schools within walking distance of the homes of the students in every locality can be an effective way to address this problem and can also contribute to bridging the gender gap. 
11. Naturally, all of the changes suggested above will require the administration to invest a greater percentage of the budget in education. 

Conclusion

The education scenario of Jammu and Kashmir is ridden with multifaceted problems at various levels which, moreover, overlap with and magnify each other. These problems, which at times share commonalities with the problems of the Indian education system in general, are exacerbated by the violence and conflict that has marred the erstwhile state for the last three decades and have diverted attention from the sector. To this has been added the effects of the double lockdown which has brought the sector and the stakeholders associated with the same near the brink of collapse. Given the urgency of the situation, resources must be diverted towards seeking a comprehensive solution towards the complex web of problems that plague the sector, keeping in mind the importance of every stakeholder involved while giving primacy to the well-being of the students. Since the problems associated with education in the UT are in many ways unique, context-sensitivity will be the key if any effective solution-oriented strategy is to be arrived upon. Only then will the future of the next generation truly be secured.

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