Riyaz Bhat
Srinagar, Jul 10: In Jammu and Kashmir nearly 4400 government run schools have been closed owing to ‘zero or extremely low’ enrollment of students.
The official documents states that there were a total of 23,117 government run schools in Jammu and Kashmir out of which 4394 have been deleted from the UDISE data.
An official said that the count of overall public schools in Jammu and Kashmir reduced because “There were some government schools that were having zero or extremely low student enrollment. Those schools were merged with the nearby public schools.”
The official figures reveal that the primary schools category of government schools was hit badly wherein the count of overall public schools in Jammu and Kashmir reduced by nearly 30 percent.
According to the official figures a total of 12,977 government primary schools were functioning in Jammu and Kashmir. However, after the merger, only 8966 primary schools are functional.
Similarly, 392 government middle schools, three high schools and one higher secondary were deleted from the UDISE+ list.
Stating the statistics of private and other schools, the official figures reveal that there were a total of 5688 such educational institutes out of which only 5555 schools were functional as of now.
Overall, Jammu and Kashmir used to have 28,805 government and private schools. However, as per the official figures, the count has reduced to 24,279 schools.
Previously, the School Education Department had said that it had identified more than 1200 such government schools that were having low enrollment of students.
It had said that such schools would likely be merged in accordance to the catchment and feasibility of the students.
In April-2022, School Education Department had said that it was all set to merge 720 government-run-schools of Jammu and Kashmir having an inadequate student enrollment.
