The interventions made by the Ladakh administration in the last three years of its existence as a Union Territory has brought the education ecosystem in the region at par with the best in the country, leading to substantial improvement in the quality of education, besides enhancing the enrolment and retention indicators. Pursuing the revolutionary approach, also prerequisite to difficult geographical conditions, further made adverse by the breakout of Covid-19 pandemic, the administration has braved it all, and how.
Concerted efforts are being made to revamp the education system in Ladakh to ensure that no child remains bereft of quality education. In what could be termed as harbinger of a new era, all schools across the UT now stand affiliated to the Central Board of School Education (CBSE), a significant move which will enhance the participation of students of Ladakh at national level examinations.
With the addition of ICT, Astronomy labs, and Atal Tinkering labs over the past three years, school infrastructure has been upgraded. To cover the digital divide among students of various areas and also to provide hybrid education to cope up COVID and winter challenges, all students of government schools from class 6th to 12th were provided digital educational tablets (YOUNTAB) with online/offline educational contents. With the intensive capacity building workshops and training of the teachers, the education delivery system is improving resulting in higher enrolment. Anganwadi Centres are simultaneously being strengthened to offer children supplementary nutrition in addition to early childhood care and education.
The infrastructure in the Higher Education sector is being strengthened with students Hostels, sports facilities and modern laboratories in all the six Colleges and the University of Ladakh. The number of courses being offered in the colleges and University has increased over the past three years. The positive outcome of all these efforts can be seen in the 25% increase in enrolment in the Higher Education Institutes over 2019. UT Administration has collaborated with the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, for internships and Sponsored M Tech programmes for the students of Ladakh.
The administration was able to affect a number of technological interventions in past three years, highly beneficial for the students of the region, which include:
- 393% increase in ICT Labs across the UT, which now stand at 148 ICT Labs against 30 in 2019
- School enrolment improved from 46,895 in 2019 to 59,788 in 2022
- Students’ enrolment in colleges increased from 2,579 in 2019 to 3,195 in 2022
- Students enrolment in the University of Ladakh increased from 99 in 2019 to 498 in 2022
- 12,300 Educational Tablets (Yountab) with offline and online contents provided to all Government School students from Class VI to XII
- 40 astronomy Labs and 24 Atal Tinkering Labs set up
- Schools with water facilities increased from 740 in 2019 to 897 in 2022
- Schools with libraries increased from 234 Schools in 2019 to 907 schools in 2022
- Beneficiaries under the ICDS from 15,711 in 2019 to 17,852 in 2022
- Students Hostels and Multi-purpose Hall under construction in all Colleges, with solar water heaters in all schools
- Faculty building and Students Dormitory with geo-Thermal Heating being built at UoL Campus at Taru, Leh
- 3 e-Buses for the UoL and Colleges and 8 e-buses for government schools procured
- 45 Students undergoing internship at IIT Delhi, Bombay and Kanpur
- 12 Engineers from Ladakh sent for sponsored M tech programme in the 3 IITs
