Jammu, Sept. 4 -- Jammu and Kashmir's school education system is standing at an important turning point. For years, the central emphasis has been on expanding access, increasing enrolment, building infrastructure and maintaining a large teaching workforce. Those achievements remain important, but the latest evidence suggests that the education debate must now move to a more fundamental question: what are children actually learning in the classrooms, and are government schools providing families with the confidence to choose them?
The latest UDISE+ 2025-26 data shows the enormous scale of the system. Jammu and Kashmir has 24,228 schools, around 26.58 lakh students and approximately 1.56 lakh teachers. The overall pupil-teacher ratio is arou...