By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, July 10: The state government has decided to recruit the Meghalaya Teachers’ Eligibility Test (MTET)-passed candidates to fill up more than 1,200 seats in the government lower primary schools.
Informing this here on Monday, Education Minister Rakkam A. Sangma said an advertisement would be issued on July 14.
The MTET was conducted in 2021 but no recruitment has been carried out since.
The MTET-passed candidates had recently urged government to hold the recruitment at the earliest as they have been jobless for two years now.
The government had decided to recruit temporary teachers but these candidates refused to accept it and sought permanent appointment at the earliest.
Sangma said the government intends to fill up these posts before August 15.
“We know that the process is long but we will try to wrap up the process in less than two months,” he said.
Central team to assess education issues
A team from the Union Ministry of Education, comprising top officials, would visit Meghalaya to discuss the issues and problems being faced in the education sector.
Sangma said the ministry is sending its top officers for discussing various issues and grievances before July 20. The issues include those related to the SSA teachers, CUET centres, and a proposed state university.
Meanwhile, it was learnt that Shillong, Jowai, and Tura would have CUET centres by 2024. Many students of the state were allotted CUET centres in different parts of the country this year.
‘State’s performance better than what rankings say’
Even though Meghalaya has been placed at the bottom along with Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram in the Ministry of Education’s Performance Grading Index (PGI) for 2021-22, Sangma believes that the abode of clouds has made tremendous improvement in the PGI ranking.
He said the surveyors did not go to the schools while giving grades to the states and maintained that Meghalaya’s PGI ranking has improved over the last three years with the state being ranked 6 this year compared to 8 in 2017.
Admitting that bigger states like Kerala are way ahead and Meghalaya cannot be at par with them overnight, he said that in 2020-21, Kerala’s grades increased from 901 to 928 whereas the grades of Meghalaya improved at a better rate from 649 to 716.
“We are improving at par with states like Kerala,” Sangma said, adding that the state has limitations but is trying its best to improve its overall ranking.
The rankings were based on a number of parameters such as accessibility, network, and infrastructure. Sangma pointed out some northeastern states do not even good mobile network.
Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Arunachal Pradesh were together adjudged the three poorest performing states/UTs (Akanshi-3 grade for score up to 460).
Meghalaya scored 420.6, while Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh scored 453.4 and 458.5 respectively.
Chandigarh and Punjab were the best performers in school education.