Giving a strong message to those endangering the quality of education in the state, the Uttar Pradesh government has ordered 20 nursing training centres to freeze admissions for the academic session 2022-23 after being found faculty-deficient.
Principal Secretary, Medical Education, Alok Kumar said that the government has envisioned Uttar Pradesh as a hub for quality nursing education, and it could be achieved only by showing no tolerance towards any entity in non-compliance with the norms, he said.
The Indian Nursing Council mandates a 1:10 faculty-student ratio for nursing training centres across the country. To ensure compliance with this norm as well as to provide good quality training to students, UP State Medical Faculty (UPSMF), the regulatory body for diploma-level nursing and paramedical education in the state, mandated biometric attendance for all faculty and students at the training centres.
“It was noticed that most training centres were not sending biometric attendance, with some facing genuine technical issues. To resolve these issues, UPSMF organised a workshop through video-conferencing in the third week of June, which was widely attended by representatives from nursing training centres,” the official said, adding that UPSMF conducted a comprehensive faculty availability verification exercise across training centres starting earlier this year.
During the first round of telephonic verification, it was found that 161 of the state’s nursing training centres (at diploma level) had less than 50 per cent of the mandated faculty-student ratio. Notices were sent out to these training centres, and 32 centres which had either not responded to any communication or had not started sending the mandated biometric attendance to the regulator were identified.
Later, a final round of e-verification was carried out wherein the identity of each tutor was verified through video calls at these 32 centres, using their registration documents as well as their Aadhaar numbers.
“Five centres did not turn up for the e-verification exercise while six turned up with fraudulent cases and nine were unable to meet even the 40 per cent benchmark of verified faculty. Three defaulting centres were found to be in JP Nagar and Mathura,” the official said.