SHILLONG: Continuing with its deliberations on the theme “Reclaiming Education,” The Society for Informed, Conscious and Responsible Existence (ICARE) organised a meeting of school principals at Shullai Progressive School in Mawlai, Mawroh on Tuesday.
It was for the first time that principals got together to discuss threadbare the problems in school education. Fourteen schools participated in the meeting.
Among others, issues such as high drop-out rates, poor pass percentage and greater number of students enrolling in Arts courses at the Higher Secondary level were deliberated.
The meeting underlined the need for a regular interface between the policy makers and those who run educational institutions for a healthy exchange of ideas so that education was more nuanced to the needs of the students.
It was also felt that parents who were the main stakeholders in the education of their children are not provided the space to interact with school authorities and that parents despite understanding the problems in education are diffident in sharing them with school authorities.
Some principals pointed to the low priority given to the value-based education and others felt it should be embedded in every subject.
Regarding B. Ed course, the principals felt that with only four colleges offering the course with 50 students in each, it would not be possible to train such a huge contingent of untrained teachers by 2019.
Welcoming the heads of institutions D Shullai, the principal of Shullai Progressive School said, “Meetings that bring heads of institutions together are few and far between, and there is an immediate need for consensus building between stakeholders through transparent and informal gatherings like these.
Earlier, ICARE president, Toki Blah said education formed a critical part of governance that everyone took for granted.
“Meghalaya was once considered the hub of education, but our standards of education have dropped considerably. The percentage of trained teachers in the lower primary sector is just 18 and upper primary just 16 in the state. Drop-out rates are the highest in the country, and Language, Science and Mathematics scores are amongst the lowest,” Blah said.
Blah also pointed out that Meghalaya did not have a policy nor an educational curriculum.
“We need to come up as stakeholders to encourage our policy makers to make education a priority area and to seriously consider the inputs from interventions such as today’s,” Blah remarked.
This is the second consultation that ICARE organised on getting educational objectives right. The first was organised in June this year with stakeholders that included educational researchers from NERIE, DERT and NEHU.
