As Kashmir returned to temporary peace after strict curfew was imposed on the first day of Ramzan, people heaved a sigh of relief. While the business community, tourism sector and fruit growers counted the losses incurred during the past two months, another loss that was almost ignored was education.

The students of the state have faced a considerable brunt of the crisis with most schools and colleges remaining closed for two months. Now that temporary normalcy has returned, the challenge before the Government, apart from handling growing separatism, is to overcome the setback to education. In the days ahead, it will be quite a task for institutions to put the academic calendar back on track and complete the syllabus on time. The frequency of shutdowns experienced in the Valley was worse during the 1990s. However, compared to the last couple of years, this year’s duration of shutdown was relatively high.

The academic calendar in the Valley has been severely hit and it can be gauged by the fact that most of the educational institutes have remained closed for five months, including the winter vacation, leaving a working period of only four months in the current academic session.

In fact, this year, the number of holidays observed so far in educational institutions is 74, excluding 90 days of winter vacations. These 74 days include 11 days of state holidays, seven days of summer break, 26 Sundays and 30 days of strikes and curfews.

The Common Entrance Test (CET) for medical and engineering courses, which was scheduled to be held in July, has been postponed thrice and so have the other examinations in Kashmir University. The CET is now scheduled for September 13 and 14.

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