SHILLONG/TURA, May 26: Meghalaya Board of School Education (MBoSE) Joint Director, Macdonald Marbaniang has expressed concern over the poor performance of the schools in the Garo Hills region.
While giving an overview of the SSLC and HSSLC (Arts) results declared on Friday, Marbaniang said the pass percentage of a majority of the schools in the Garo Hills was 26-28. “This is very low compared to the pass percentage of 73 in East Khasi Hills, 71 in West Jaintia Hills, and 64 in Eastern West Jaintia Hills,” he said.
He said there is a need for introspection to find out ways to help schools in the far-flung and remote areas of the state.
He further said the Education Department has taken steps to upscale the skills of the teachers by using new technologies and adopting some remedial measures.
“We hope to see some improvement in the coming years due to the interventions of the government,” the MBoSE joint director said.
Marbaniang said he noticed that most of the students in Garo Hills are first-generation learners.
According to him, these students are not getting any help from their parents and even the teachers cannot give special attention due to work overload.
He said that the pass percentage for the SSLC examination witnessed a decline, dropping to 51.93 from last year’s 56.96. The pass percentage for the HSSLC (Arts) stream also decreased to 80 from the previous year’s 81.
Marbaniang, however, said he is satisfied with the performance of affiliated institutions.
He said many of these schools achieved a commendable success rate in both the SSLC and HSSLC examinations.
He praised the dedication and efforts of teachers and lecturers in government schools for their outstanding performance in the exams.
Additionally, he emphasised the importance of assessing the performance of the schools.
After improving to an all-time high of more than 34% last year, the pass percentage of the entire Garo Hills region dropped by more than 2% with only 31.94% of students that appeared for the SSLC this year succeeding. The overall pass percentage of the entire state stood at 51.93.
The best-performing district in Garo Hills was West Garo Hills with 36.58% of students passing. The total number of students that appeared in the district was 9925 while 3,631 of these passed.
The next best was the district of East Garo Hills with 2,897 students appearing for the exam and 1,020 passing to notch up an average of 35.2%. The other three districts recorded below 30%.
In South Garo Hills, only 755 out of a total of 2,709 candidates passed while 955 of the 3,573 candidates in South West Garo Hills sailed through. North Garo Hills was the worst performer with 962 of 3,821 candidates succeeding to record an overall pass percentage of 25.17.
Overall, a total of 22,925 students appeared for the exams in the Garo Hills this year and only 7,323 sailed through.
On expected lines, urban centres hogged the limelight with Tura doing the best in terms of achievers. The plain belt, which has been regularly amongst the top 20, once again continued to shine with three rank holders.
Many schools, mostly from the rural centres saw none pass the exams, underlining the need to improve the quality of education.
At least five schools from the rural belts in the Garo Hills drew a complete blank with none passing despite more than a hundred students appearing for the exams.
