Jammu Tawi, 14 February: The Chief Secretary, Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta on Monday chaired a meeting to take stock of arrangements for reopening of educational institutions and resuming offline teaching in Jammu and Kashmir.
It was informed that the Jammu Kashmir Administration has been regularly reviewing the Covid situation in the Union territory and has now decided to resume offline teaching by reopening all educational institutions.
The Chief Secretary stated that the Covid positivity rate in the UT has been come down to 0.7% and impressed upon the Heads of all educational institutions to remain vigilant to any signs of infection especially among unvaccinated students below the age of 17 years, besides ensuring adherence to Covid appropriate behavior, SoPs and protocols; proper social distancing; and hand hygiene provisions, and compliance to UGC guidelines in the matter.
Mehta asked the Vice-Chancellors of universities, Principals of colleges, and Heads of all schools to submit COVID prevention and mitigation plans taking into account capacity of class rooms with 6 feet norm, staggered teaching plan, COVID protocols, vaccination, screening, and emergency SoP; within two days. The education institutions were further asked to regularly screen their students and ensure that symptomatic students are tested timely and isolated to prevent the spread of infection.
The Chief Secretary impressed upon the institutions to build on the experience of online classes and adopt an ideal blend of IT-based offline teaching curriculum to boost students' learning outcomes and successfully train them for national-level examinations. “The academic year 2022-23 shall be the year of educational transformation for Jammu and Kashmir”, Dr. Mehta maintained. He emphasised that each head of the Institution shall be personally responsible for covid management and healthy teaching environment. There should be no tolerance for unhealthy activities in places of learning.
Additionally, the Higher Education Department and School Education Department were asked to fully implement the National Education Policy across Jammu and Kashmir during 2022, thereby making the Union territory, the first among in the country to do so. (KNB)
