Weekly off on Sunday or Friday?

Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education will soon take a call on whether the institutions should start observing a weekly off on Sunday instead of Friday, after a proposal in this regard came up in a recent meeting held to discuss proposed amendments to the board manual.

The board is also mulling over a proposal regarding making uniforms mandatory for students of the seminaries as well as holding training programmes for madarsa teachers of various subjects every year.

Currently, unlike other educational institutions, the seminaries are shut on Fridays instead of Sundays owing to the Friday prayers as very often the madarsas are part of mosques. However, board officials said students are unwilling to come to study on Sundays.


The chairman of the board, Iftikhar Ahmed Javed, said the amendment was proposed in the meeting held on Monday, but many of those present also objected to the move. The meeting was held by members of the board, officials of the minority welfare department, along with managers and principals of multiple madarsas across the state. More than 20 proposals came up, one of which was the need to declare Sunday as a holiday. A decision on the matter will be taken at the next meeting of the board, said Javed.

The proposals are also aimed at bringing the madarsas on a par with other educational institutions as well as to raise standards of non-Islamic teaching there.

The proposal to make uniforms mandatory was also floated by the state in 2018, but it could not be implemented. Currently, the state government transfers ₹1,200 through direct benefit transfer to government school students of class 1 to class 8 for purchase of uniform, bag and stationery.