Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir government has decided to establish the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) on the lines of NCERT to assist and advise the administration in implementing policies and programmes for human resource development, an official spokesman said on Saturday.
The Administrative Council (AC), which met under the chairmanship of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, gave approval to the establishment of SCERT by merging State Institutes of Education in Jammu and Kashmir, the spokesman said.
He said the SCERT, being the apex academic authority of the UT, is mandated to assist and advise the government in implementation of policies and programmes for human resource development in the field of education, human and child development and national integration, on the analogy of NCERT- the national apex academic authority.
The SCERT will also look after various aspects of curriculum development, health and physical education, guidance and counselling, and inclusive and special education, he said.
The decision to establish a new body includes revisiting various policy parameters concerning teachers education to create a sound institutional infrastructure for both pre-service and in-service training of teachers and for academic resource support to elementary/secondary schools, the spokesman said.
Additionally, he said, it will also fill up institutional gaps and introduce uniformity in nomenclature despite different academic calendars being followed in sub-tropical and temperate zones of Jammu and Kashmir.
The new body is envisaged to meet the challenges in teachers” education arising from recent spatial and numerical expansion of schooling facilities at elementary and secondary levels along with corresponding skill enhancement of teachers through proper orientation and training, he added.
The spokesman said the SCERT will enable the Department of School Education to train 1.34 lakh in-service teachers through various professional trainings, capacity building programmes, induction courses, contentment enrichment and contemporary trends and techniques for ensuring quality education.
To provide academic and resource support at grass-roots level, the SCERT will function through existing District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETS), which have been brought under the administrative control of the former, the spokesman said.
He said in order to make the SCERT operational, the Administrative Council assigned the charge of Director SCERT to the chairman of JKBOSE, as an interim measure.
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