NT Reporter
Panaji
The Goa Samagra Shiksha vide a circular dated August 12, 2026, has directed the heads of all government, government aided, unaided and special schools in Goa – from the primary to the higher secondary level – to provide a number of details about all boy and girl students for the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK) 2.0 portal.
Besides the gender, date of birth, address and Aadhaar number, the circular has asked the schools to provide details of students’ health parameters.
Health parameters include height, weight and hemoglobin (Hb) count.
However, the limited time given to the students to come out with this data, especially the hemoglobin count, has put the parents in great difficulty.
The circular informs that the data will help the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in strengthening digital health records of children through a unique health identifier and health cards.
“In the initial phase, the core focus is on generating, validating, and linking ABHA (Ayushman Bharat Health Account) IDs for all school-going children and linking their IDs with the Permanent Education Number (PEN ID) of the Ministry of Education,” the circular adds.
The schools have been instructed to urgently collect and submit student details and further told to ensure 100 per cent data completion and accuracy against physical verification records.
Furthermore, the consolidated data should be submitted to the respective block resource centres (BRCs) of Goa Samagra Shiksha, within seven days.
The students have to get their hemoglobin count checked through a blood test, and the state has an estimated 2.97 lakh school students enrolled across primary, elementary, secondary, and higher secondary levels in Goa according to the recent UDISE+ school education data.
In addition, the week-long period given to the schools to collect the data includes two holidays namely Independence Day and a Sunday, when the blood testing centres/pathology labs are closed.
A number of parents have expressed their apprehension over the impractical timeframe, and the haste displayed by the Goa Samagra Shiksha in collecting the said medical data.
“Expecting parents to arrange and bear the cost of medical test at clinic or pathology lab is also absurd, besides not all parents having immediate access to such facilities,” many of the parents have maintained.
According to a parent, the RBSK 2.0 guidelines states that schoolchildren of the age group between 6 and 18 years are to be screened by mobile health teams for deficiencies, diseases, and developmental delays including disability, at the respective schools, at least once a year.
However, the government has now shifted the blood testing responsibility on to the parents.
A highly placed official of the Education Department said the programme is a central government’s initiative and as per the instruction of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the data needs to be collected within one week, for forwarding to the directorate of health services, for needful action.
