‘To bring school, higher education calendars at par with national level’
Srinagar: The J&K government is planning to shift its Board examination session to March in order to sync it with the national academic calendar.
The move comes in wake of the government decision to adopt the Uniform Academic Calendar in Higher Education Department (HED) and also implement the National Education Policy (NEP)-2020 from the current academic session, concurrently.
In this regard, a high level meeting was chaired by J&K Chief Secretary Dr Arun Kumar Mehta to review and discuss modalities for implementation of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 in J&K.
In the meeting it was also decided that the four year undergraduate programme as per UGC guidelines would be introduced in colleges of J&K from the current academic session.
“The Principal Secretary School Education Department (SED) who was also in the meeting was asked to devise ways and means so that the JK Board examination session will be shifted to March from next year,” an official told Greater Kashmir.
“Obviously the changes made in the UG academic session have to be linked with the academic calendar of SED so that there will be complete synchronisation of the academic session from school to University level,” he said.
Principal Secretary School Education Department (SED), Bishwajit Kumar Singh also confirmed that the examination session of J&K Board of School Education (BOSE) will be shifted to March.
“The department has been asked to hold the exams in March for both Jammu and Kashmir division. The exams will be held in February last month for Jammu division and will be followed by examination of students of Kashmir and winter zones of Jammu division,” Singh told Greater Kashmir.
“The exams will be conducted simultaneously one after the other,” he said.
He said SED will wait for further directions of the government for implementation of the decision. “The government will issue further instructions about from which session the decision will be implemented,” he said.
He said the department will go ahead with shifting the exams session for class 10th to 12th students while the examination session for junior classes will be shifted gradually, later.
“To begin with, sessions of class 10th and 12th students will be shifted to March. The examination calendar of junior classes will also be synced with the national academic calendar later,” Singh said.
Besides shifting the session of SED to March, the government has already geared to implement the NEP-2020 in Higher Education with the introduction of Four Year Under-Graduate Programmes (FYUG) in Degree Colleges across J&K.
As per the draft Curricular Framework and Credit System for the FYUGP, the graduates of the FYUGP are required to demonstrate a general understanding of the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, interdisciplinary studies, and vocational education across semesters.
The FYUGP system compulsorily seeks choosing and completion of credits from Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, interdisciplinary studies, and vocational education.
However, it has thrown major challenges for the J&K Government to implement the FYUGP in colleges which do not offer admissions in all the streams.
“For this the government is deliberating on many things. One of the concepts under discussion is to go for clustering wherein the college having all the facilities for FYUGP will cater to the requirement of other colleges which sans these facilities,” said Dean Academic Affairs (DAA) of a University who attended the meeting.
“The deliberations are going on how to go ahead with the introduction of FYUGP and how colleges will share the facilities,” he said.
He said the Dean Academic Affairs of some Universities in J&K will jointly formulate the plan for implementation of the policy besides holding exams in sync with the national academic calendar.
“Department is also deliberating on availing facilities of e-learning and use the available e-content for which the J&K Chief Secretary has agreed to compensate if students were charged for using the e-content,” he said.
Notably, the government earlier decided to implement the FYUGP in colleges in a phased manner.
“But the government has now decided to implement it in all the colleges citing that colleges and University will have to cater to two parallel systems of exams if the FYUGP is implemented in a phased manner which will be problematic for institutions and students as well,” the DAA said.(GK)
