SHILLONG: Education Minister Lahkmen Rymbui on Tuesday described the results of the SSLC examinations declared on Monday as a “wake up” call while expressing disappointment over the poor showing.
The silver lining, however, was the performance of government schools, which he said was encouraging.
The overall pass percentage in SSLC was 55.72 while it was 76.28 for HSLC (Arts stream) the results of which were declared simultaneously.
According to Rymbui, regular candidates have done well, but the non-regular students left much to be desired and the government would have to take a hard look at it.
Expressing his happiness at the performance of the government schools, he said that the results of both the secondary and higher secondary schools were are very good and the credit for this goes to the teachers.
“I hope a time will come when parents and guardians will look at government schools for the education of their children and wards,” he said.
“Except for Patharkhmah, Jirang and Rongrengiri most of the government schools elsewhere performed very well even though they may not have made it to the merit list,” he said.
Also lauding the performance of schools in rural areas, Rymbui said many of the toppers were from far flung places which shows that it does not only depend on schools but also on the students, parents and teachers.
“Yes, they do lack infrastructure, but if there is a will there is a possibility,” he said.
Talking about the performance of schools in Garo Hills, Rymbui said that results of Class 12 Science and Class 10 were not encouraging.
“This has been happening for the past many years and the government is focusing to improve the education system in the Garo Hills,” he said.
) He said the government is looking to give a boost to the education set up in Garo Hills by establishing an engineering college in Ampati and an architecture college in Tura.
“The government is committed to better the education scenario and we hope that this will help,” he said.
Highlighting one of the major concerns of the state government, Rymbui said that it takes a lot of time to fill up vacancies of teachers especially in government schools.
“Vacancies of teachers should be filled up timely. The course and students cannot wait,” he said.