SHILLONG, May 30: In the wake of plummeting performance of schools from Garo Hills in the recently conducted state board examinations, the state government has decided to constitute a fact finding committee to unearth the cause of the poor show by the schools in the Garo Hills region.
Education Minister Rakkam A Sangma told The Shillong Times here on Tuesday that the dismal performance of the schools in the region has evoked concern from the authorities.
According to him, the government will soon meet the head of different institutions and other stakeholders to find out the root cause of the declining performance of the schools.
Sangma said that the process of holding discussions with the stakeholders would start within a couple of weeks.
“There may be some issues and we want to improve the standard of education at all levels,” he said, while emphasising on the old glory of Meghalaya and Shillong as an educational hub, and how it must be brought back.
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 9,925 while 3,631 of them passed.
The next best was 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.
At least 5 schools from the rural belt in Garo Hills drew a complete blank with none passing despite more than 100s of students appearing from these schools.
