Tura, Jun 10: The quality of education in Garo Hills seems to have slightly improved with an increase in the pass percentage for the entire region. What has come as bigger boost is that centres considered rural in nature have actually outranked the urban centres in Garo Hills.
Sherwood School as usual performed the best amongst schools in Garo Hills with four of the top twenty rank holders coming from the schools. What, however, has brought about a smile to faces has been the performance of Woodland School in Dalu and two schools in the plain belt.
Bhaitbari HS School provided the 9th and 10th rank students in SSLC while two student from JN HHSC School ranked 20th. JN HS School has continued to provide a bee line of achievers since the past few years and the sense of achievement is deep.
Although historical data is not available at the MBOSE website, it is a known fact that Garo Hills has hardly moved beyond 28% in previous years. The fact that the pass% this year is over 36.66% indicates that at least something is going in the right direction.
In Garo Hills a total of 24930 students took the exams this year with 9126 passing through, an overall pass percentage of 36.66. While it may take decades to catch up with the results of Jaintia- Khasi Hills, at least a move seems to have been made.
| District | Appeared | Passed | % |
| East Garo Hills | 3330 | 1309 | 0.393093 |
| West Garo Hills | 10755 | 4420 | 0.410972 |
| South Garo Hills | 2836 | 897 | 0.316291 |
| North Garo Hills | 3865 | 1404 | 0.36326 |
| South West Garo Hills | 4144 | 1096 | 0.264479 |
| Total | 24930 | 9126 | 0.366065 |
The woes of Garo Hills has always been the neglect shown towards education with problems of infrastructure, proxy teachers, absent teachers as well as a lackadaisical education department playing a huge part in the poor education situation.
While there are hardly any instances of schools being in a state of haunting in Khasi-Jaintia Hills, there are too many from Garo Hills to report about. Hundreds of schools in the 5 district have been crying for care to be taken of them, though the cry has not been answered, except for the urban areas or the occasional viral videos and photos.
Coming to the success of Woodland School in Dalu, the fact is that efforts have been ongoing. The school has been regularly producing first division students over the past few years despite not being affiliated as such to MBOSE. Their success spells joy for the many private institutions in Garo Hills that have been going the extra mile to produce results.
In the case of JN HS School, education has always been taken seriously in the plain belt. The fact can be gauged from the impact that the school has had in producing leaders in the region.
Though a new entity in the mix for now, the Bhaitbari HS School, has similarly been producing results. Ranks 9 and 10 in the SSLC does not come in a jiffy unless hard work is involved.
Most now hope that the graph in Garo Hills will only show an upward trend going forward. After all the most important part of their children’s life – education is at stake.