Maharashtra: Govt-aided schools to lose govt’s salary grant on failing to submit attendance records of teaching, non-teaching staff

“Schools eligible for government grants have to submit a report on attendance of its teaching and non-teaching staff and whether or not their students’ data is uploaded on the Vidya Samiksha Kendra along with a status report on their APAAR ID. Schools failing to comply will be responsible for losing their salary grants,” states the letter from the school education department to the Commissioner of school education. The Commissioner has in turn issued orders to local education officers to seek data from schools, leading to dissent among teachers.

A principal of one of the aided-schools said, “The government has taken a strict stand when it comes to salary grants issued for private schools aided by the government by asking such attendance reports for staff. But further connecting the salary grant with APAAR ID generation and VSK data upload is unfair as that is not completely under schools’ control.”

The APAAR ID is designed to serve as a digital registry for a student’s complete academic record from school years whereas VSK is a digital system to effectively monitor progress of school education. “With minor changes, this is a third system to upload students’ data. Furthermore, APAAR ID generation work is also in progress with its own challenges. As all this is time-consuming, schools should be given adequate time to complete these processes,” said a teacher from another government-aided school.