The government of Jammu and Kashmir yesterday cleared all air around the March session exams for all the classes and now schools have been asked to conduct the exams in the month of March instead of Oct.-Nov. This decision has come at a time when schools were bracing up for the annual exams for the lower and middle classes. Since our children have to experience a new exam calendar; it will have consequences as well.
Our educational policymakers closed their eyes to the suggestions made by different sections of society including educationists. Repeated pleas and prayers in this regard have fallen on deaf ears and the schools have less time left to come to terms with the exam schedule. It would have been better if the government had spared the lower classes and had experimented on the upper middle or secondary classes for the new routine or schedule.
Almost all the government and private schools have no arrangements for carrying on the class work during the cold days of December and this season our children would have to bear lots of difficulties while attending their schools, especially in chillai Kalan (the forty-day harsh winter period). Educational institutions would have to strive hard for making available heating arrangements for the kids and this is surely going to put an extra financial burden on parents.
Yet another decision that the fee fixation committee of the government yesterday made was a fourteen percent hike in transport charges. There is no doubt that fuel prices have gone shooting up in the last two years but all of us know that we have just come out of the covid pandemic and the financial position of most people is very weak. Putting extra burden upon the parents is surely going to haunt them for a long time that too when the decision has a retrospective effect.
