Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir High Court has directed government to inform it whether or not Student-Teacher ratio, fixed by the Ministry of Human Resources, Government of India, is being maintained in respect of Primary and upper primary schools in Urban and Rural areas throughout the State.
As hearing of a Public Interest Litigation started before Chief Justice Badar Durrez Ahmed and Justice Sanjeev Kumar, Ravinder Gupta, Additional Advocate General, requests for a final opportunity of three weeks’ to file the status report with regard to the Student-Teacher ratio as fixed by the Ministry of Human Resources.
While granting the time, the court directed that status report shall also indicate as to whether the ratio is being maintained throughout Jammu and Kashmir. The court posted the PIL for hearing on 12 February next year.
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 in its Schedule lays down Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) for both primary and upper primary schools. At primary level the PTR should be 30:1 and at the upper primary level it should be 35:1. The Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) framework stipulates that the PTR at secondary level should be 30:1.
As per Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE), the PTR at national level for elementary schools is 24:1 and for secondary schools it is 27:1.
Globally, there are variations in the optimum number of students taught in a particular class and as such the data is not uniformly comparable.
The Government of India through the flagship programmes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) at elementary level and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) at secondary level provides assistance to the State Governments and UTs for additional teachers to maintain appropriate PTR as per the prescribed norms for various levels of schooling.
