LUCKNOW:
Madrasa students
across
Uttar Pradesh will now have to recite the national anthem as a mandatory activity before they begin their class along with morning prayers, according to a decision taken by the
UP Board of Madarssa Education
on Thursday.
The decision comes almost five years after the board in 2017 had made the recital of the national anthem and hoisting of the national flag mandatory on
Independence Day.
Several decisions related to examinations, attendance and recruitment of teachers were taken by the board at a meeting headed by chairperson
Iftikhar Ahmad Javed
on Thursday. It was decided that a Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) based
Madrassa Teachers Eligibility Test
(MTET) should be started as a pre-qualification to become a madrassa teacher.
"Bhai-Bhateejavad has become the order of the day in teachers’ recruitment. This is why the board has decided to make MTET mandatory, but the selection process will be finalised by the management. A formal proposal will be sent to the government soon," the board chairperson told TOI.
"The national anthem is sung in various schools and we want to instill patriotism in madrasa students too so that they know our history and culture apart from religious studies. It is already recited in some madrasas. We have made it compulsory now from the coming academic session," he added.
Besides, the board will conduct a survey to figure out how many children of madrasa teachers study in private schools to boost declining student numbers, he said, adding that student attendance and verification would also be linked with Aadhar card. "The teacher-student ratio in several madrasas is skewed and we plan to rotate teachers for better results. We also want to find out where children of our teachers study to boost numbers as it is said that our teachers motivate others to send their children to madrasas, but they send their own wards to private convent schools," Javed added.
To work on the student number, the Aadhar card will be linked to student registration for verification and attendance purposes too, while biometric attendance will be put in place for teachers from the next academic session.
Stating that madrasa board exams would be held from May 14 to May 27, he said that as decided at a meeting in October last year subjects like Hindi, English, maths, social sciences and science would be made mandatory from the next academic session for students up to senior secondary level.
"Six examination papers will be made mandatory with the addition of these subjects. These subjects were optional until now and taught from NCERT books. We want our students to be part of the mainstream," Javed added.
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