According to a report published on News18.com, in an effort to revamp the madarsa education structure in India, the Human Resource and Development (HRD) Ministry is planning to make it mandatory for such institutions to be affiliated to either madarsa boards or state boards under the Scheme to Provide Quality Education in Madrassas (SPQEM).
As per the report, the scheme is aimed at bringing about qualitative improvement in madarsa education and act as an enabler for students attending such institutions in attaining standards at par with the national education system in formal subjects.
Another initiative taken up under this scheme is to try and make a map of madarsas functioning in this country based on their GPS. In order to achieve this, The HRD ministry is pondering upon the idea of making unique identification mandatory for every madarsa to trace their physical location via GPS.
Last year the HRD ministry had asked for the physical location data of those madrasas covered under SPQEM and the ones which were non-compliant had to wait for teacher’s payment.
This is just one of the many steps the government has taken to modernise madarsas. Last year in August, Yogi Adityanath led Uttar Pradesh government had introduced subjects like maths and science as well as introduction of NCERT books in madarsas. The UP government had also launched a Madarsa portal to provide transparency in employment, infrastructure and educational details of the several hundred madarsas operating in the state.
Meanwhile, some madarsas are likely to oppose the move of the Centre as they see the reform measures as ‘government interference’ in their autonomous functioning.