Department aims to improve standard of education in Meghalaya
By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Nov 10: Education Minister Rakkam A Sangma on Friday said the textbook committee has recommended adopting NCERT textbooks for a few subjects with contextualisation with the state’s environment.
A proposal towards this effect has been made to the state government which will take a decision on it during a Cabinet meeting on November 16.
“To bring up the standard at par with the rest of the country, the Meghalaya Board of School Education (MBoSE) will have a new curriculum and new textbooks in the days to come. We are putting a proposal for copyright and MBoSE will do the contextualisation. It will re-print and print all editions in line with NCERT textbooks,” the minister said.
“For the interim period, the Text Book Review Committee has put up a proposal to the government to bring up our curriculum and syllabus to national-level standard,” Sangma said.
He added that the committee has proposed to the government to adopt the NCERT textbooks of certain subjects such as mathematics, science, English and social science with contextualisation with the state’s environment.
“On 16th, the Cabinet will decide on this and we will definitely take a call in the interest of the students. We want to bring up the standard of our curriculum and syllabus because in every competitive examination, we expect our students to perform well at the national-level. This is the whole idea about it,” he added.
“The state government is in the process of finalising the state curriculum framework and we will design our own textbooks which will be the best in the country. We will have a committee for framing our state curriculum and syllabus in line with NEP (National Education Policy) and national standard,” the minister said.
Talking about the exercise undertaken before making the proposal, he said, “Our officers reviewed (the matter) with subject experts, teachers, students and I have also reviewed and met the principals of many higher secondary and secondary schools in Tura as well as Shillong. They have all agreed and want it.”
Additionally, the Education Department is going for a massive survey to get the real picture of the increased low enrolment rates in primary and upper primary schools.
As per data made available by the Ministry of Education, Meghalaya has 168 primary schools with less than 10 enrolments and 101 upper primary Schools where enrolment is dismal.
“We are going for a massive survey to get a real picture of all the schools,” Sangma said.
As regards low enrolment, he felt the schools failed to inspire students.
“Maybe, they do not have proper buildings, teachers and infrastructure. We are aware and doing all exercises like deputing teachers for the time being,” he added.
According to the data, over 9,54,938 students are enrolled in over 14,600 schools. Of these, 5,30,390 are enrolled in 9,223 primary schools, 2,44,008 in 3,529 upper primary schools, 1,17,496 in 1,462 secondary schools and 63,044 in 386 higher secondary schools.
The data further stated that there are 36 schools with zero enrolment. Of them, 22 are primary schools, 5 upper primary schools, 8 secondary schools and 1 higher secondary school. There are also 1,320 single-teacher schools, of which 1,257 are primary schools, 32 upper primary schools, 29 secondary schools and 2 higher secondary schools.