In a meeting conducted by the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madrassa Education, it was decided to make the recital of the national anthem a mandatory activity before starting the classes every day along with the already existing morning prayers from the upcoming session in all recognized, aided and unaided madrassas of UP.

The meeting was chaired by Dr. Iftikhar Ahmed Javed, President of the Madrassa Education Council who said that the national anthem is already recited in some madrassas but since we want to inculcate the feeling of patriotism in all our students and also want them to be aware of our history and culture apart from religious studies, we have made this activity obligatory from the upcoming session.

Along with this many other important decisions were taken by the council during the meeting. One such major decision was the introduction of Madrassa Teachers Eligibility Test (MTET) based on the lines of Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) as a pre-requisite for becoming a madrassa teacher. A formal proposal of the scheme will be sent to the Yogi government soon. It was also proposed to conduct a survey for figuring out how many children of madrassa teachers study in private schools to check the declining student numbers as Javed added that our teachers ask other children to come and study at madrassas but send their own to private schools.

Besides recruitment, the board also discussed matters related to attendance and examination. It was decided by the board members that Aadhar card will be linked with students’ registration for verification and attendance whereas a provision of beginning biometric attendance for teachers was also mulled upon.

With regard to the exams, Javed told that six examination papers will be made mandatory including subjects such as Hindi, English, Mathematics, Science and Social Science along with the syllabus of Deeniyat. The Yogi government had previously made computer education compulsory to focus on providing modern education in the madrasas.

Earlier in 2017 recital of national anthem and hoisting of the tricolour was made compulsory on Independence Day.