Chandigarh: APAAR IDs to help check unrecognised schools

(Blurb) Aim is to bring students to mainstream institutes, says official; city has 79 unrecognised schools

The UT education department will use APAAR IDs to bring students of unrecognised schools to mainstream institutions. The department recently held a meeting with representatives of unrecognised schools regarding this.

Harsuhinderpal Singh Brar, director, school education, said the APAAR ID tracks the progress of students from nursery till PhD. “Since students at unrecognised schools won’t have APAAR IDs, we have told the schools and the students that they won’t be able to switch to mainstream schools as gaps will appear in the system. It will also be flagged if they choose to go to college. With these new IDs, we will bring students back to mainstream schools and also check the spread of unrecognised schools in the city.”

The APAAR ID scheme for schools was launched by the Union ministry of education from the 2024-25 session. APAAR has been conceptualised under the National Education Policy-2020 under which a 12-digit unique code, like the Aadhaar code, is generated for each student, which can store information regarding credits, certificates and co-curricular activities throughout their education journey. Students will also be able to use APAAR ID at the time of admission at various levels of their education. APAAR will eventually become a lifetime ID for students — from pre-primary to PhD.

There are 79 unrecognised schools in the city, as per UT education officials. In August last year, education officials had visited 66 of these schools and highlighted various security lapses.

Chandigarh is in the top five states/UTs in the country when it comes to the percentage of school students whose APAAR ID has been generated. As per the latest data, the total enrolment in the schools of Chandigarh is 2.45 lakh students and till now APAAR IDs of 2.19 lakh students have been generated, making it 89.5%. Chandigarh ranks third while Andaman and Nicobar Islands is at the top with 96.3%, Puducherry (90.4%) second, Haryana (87.4%) fourth and Maharashtra (86%) fifth. School education director Brar said the department aims to bring Chandigarh to 100% this session.

The education department is also using APAAR IDs to track dummy admissions. In a recent meeting with coaching centres, Brar informed them that if students have taken admission in some school far from the city in Punjab or Haryana and continue their coaching here, it would be flagged through their APAAR IDs. As per a circular by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), they will not be allowed to appear in the class XII exams from this year onwards. They will have to appear in the open board exams.