Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir is still in the process of preparing detailed project reports (DPRs) for establishing model schools sanctioned with an aid of more than rupees 43 crores under a centrally sponsored scheme in 2008.
In many far off areas of the former state the authorities have put on sign boards in schools and declared them as model schools. But nowhere has the required infrastructure been established under the scheme.
The scheme by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, had been sanctioned to create model schools with latest infrastructural facilities in the educationally backward blocks (EBB) of the erstwhile state.
The EBBs were to be selected based on female rural literacy rate being below the national average and gender gap in literacy being above the national average.
Rupees 43 crores have been allocated for the purpose under the scheme but not a single school has been established so far in the state, admitted a senior officer.
Ninety percent of the funds under the scheme are provided by the central government as grants while the state is supposed to contribute the remaining ten percent.
Nearly 3500 quality good schools were to be built under the scheme all over India. Most of the schools across India have been made operational but J&K is yet to complete even the DPR, said a source.
According to preliminary estimates more than 100 model schools had been identified in J&K under the scheme. Sources say the funds have now got lapsed and any possibility of availing the scheme is very remote.
However, Iftikhar Hussain, Director Finance School Education, said that the funds have neither been lost or lapsed and they are very much in possession of the department. “DPRs are being prepared for executing the scheme and once approved, the money will be sent to the concerned directorates for execution”.
Hussain said that there was some inaction due to certain reasons over the years which affected the scheme but the DPRS are now likely to be approved very soon.
Additional classrooms, science laboratory, library, computer lab, art/craft/culture room, toilets, drinking water facilities and other services were to be installed in the model schools under the scheme.
The scheme would have gone a long way in reducing the drop-out rate in schools in areas situated in backward areas and improved the learning systems, said Gowhar Ahmad, a senior functionary of the J&K General Line Teachers Forum.
Gowhar says that he has worked in almost 10 different government schools of Kashmir but was depressed at the pathetic infrastructural faculties in almost all the schools he served.
Government Higher Secondary School Frisal Kulgam is a case worth study on the imaginary model trajectory of educational infrastructural up-gradation.
A sign board identifying the school as a model school was raised in 2015. However none of the infrastructural facilities the school was entitled under the scheme were provided to the school, said a teacher posted up to the recent past in the school.
Contrarily the physical assets and facilities of the school have been laid hold of by others. Major portion of its land comprising 1-6 hectares has been handed over to a newly established Degree College, the teacher said adding a large building with a computer lab belonging to the school is now being utilized for the college.
The teacher said that the school catering to a large catchment is now reduced to seven rooms and its academic performance has been largely affected.
A portion of the school land is under the occupation of the Army, said another teacher.
