Jammu and Kashmir: Education Department shifts focus on children of tender age

For this, the government has started an exhaustive exercise for face lifting of existing government schools by upgrading the infrastructural facilities besides taking up other renovation works.

The School Education Department has started construction of new building blocks besides renovation of existing blocks and has set a target to have 2000 state-of-art schools for kindergarten children with modern facilities.

The construction of around 200 schools is complete while the department is expecting completion of work on around 1800 schools within three to four months this year. Director School Education Kashmir (DSEK) Muhammad Younis Malik said, “Work is going on a war footing and these schools will have a state-of-art facilities for the children of the tender age group.”

Besides establishment of the state-of-art kindergarten schools, the department is also set to have two smart classrooms in each higher secondary school in Kashmir.

“We have received financial support of Rs 23 crore from the government for this initiative. The smart classrooms will be made functional very soon,” he said.

Besides the massive project launched by the School Education Department for establishment of kindergarten section, the schools are also getting financial support from the district administrations as well.

The district administration Srinagar has also started a massive project to establish model schools with the kindergarten section in the district.

The schools would be set up on Delhi model. Also, in Baramulla district, the Education department has got financial support of Rs 34 crores for face lifting of existing 20 government schools to establish kindergarten section in the institutions.

The schools will have modern infrastructure facilities, sleeping beds for kids, television sets besides other facilities at par with private schools.

Besides this, the School Education Department has also decided to upgrade one school in each zone of the districts on modern lines in order to set up kindergarten section for the kids.

The department shifted focus on strengthening of kindergarten schools after the demands were raised in the back to village programmes and enrolment drives carried by the department in the past months.

With the government taking new initiatives to strengthen the kindergarten section, the slogan of ‘changing face of the government schools’ has become a new buzz in Kashmir. The initiatives are being taken after years of denial by the government to upgrade the kindergarten section of the schools.