Chandigarh to include private schools' data in Vidya Samiksha Kendra

Hindustan Times

13-07-2025

The UT education department has written to private schools of the city to integrate data of the schools in the Vidya Samiksha Kendra (VSK) run by the department. Chandigarh's VSK is connected to the Rashtriya Vidya Samiksha Kendra (RVSK) at CIET-NCERT, New Delhi. (HT photo for representation)
Presently, only government school data is being analysed through this platform. Onboarding of all private schools (with valid UDISE+ codes) onto the VSK platform will ensure holistic utilisation of VSK's benefits for all categories of schools and for all stakeholders.
Chandigarh's VSK is connected to the Rashtriya Vidya Samiksha Kendra (RVSK) at CIET-NCERT, New Delhi. The VSK, installed in the Sector-9 school education department office, connects systemic data and aims to bring visibility to real time educational datasets. It also enables data driven decisions for both administrative and academic educational stakeholders and is mandated for all states and UTs by the centre.
The data of Parakh Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024 which was recently released for UT schools when hosted on VSK will support the development of inclusive, data-driven educational policies and targeted interventions. This will work for areas such as attendance, assessment, administration and accreditation.
Speaking about the initiative, UT director of school education Harsuhinderpal Singh Brar said that the department aims to gather data that accurately reflects the quality and effectiveness of UT's education system while giving insight into where policy interventions and resource allocations are most needed. 'This will allow the department to identify specific areas for targeted improvement, whether it is in curriculum design, teaching practices/training, or learning environments, ensuring every child has equitable access to quality education,' he added. Brar hopes that the process will be carried out within this academic session.
UT writes to centre on mandatory biometric Aadhar update of children
After the UID Implementation Committee (UIDIC) had directed to give priority to the mandatory biometric update of the children who have attained the age of 5 and 15, the UT director of school education has written to Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) that the UT has adopted the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) developed by NIC, New Delhi and has been implemented in all states/UTs wherein the child-wise data is being collected along with Aadhaar number.
When the Aadhaar number of the student/teacher is entered on this UDISE+ portal and checked for validation from UIDAI Portal, it reflects whether the Aadhar entry is validated or not. Brar said that the current UDISE+ portal software returns a report of only the Aadhaar number being verified but does not confirm whether the Aadhar mandatory biometric has been updated for that number or not.
He proposed that UIDAI may consider a software update giving an option on the UDISE+ portal to reflect whether the biometric has been updated or not. The centre has accepted this proposal and has begun integrating this in their software.